36 Responses to “yada yada yada”

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   mccxxiii:
   October 27th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

   I was the only kid in my class who stuttered, and kids of every race made fun of me. And it is most definitely *not* something I can just change or “make it go away”. (Should gay people just change and be straight, too? Huh?)

   It will be with me for the whole of my life. It’s not the most pronounced or debilitating of any stutter in the world, but it’s enough to ensure that I spent my childhood being mocked and teased.

   Talk all you want about white privilege, but I was just as sad and bewildered about that as *any* kid who was being made fun of about *anything*. Racism sucks, but it’s not the only thing in the world that sucks, and there’s no special martyr prize for anybody. We all have our crosses to bear. American society is set up to marginalize fat people, too. Should I be unpacking my backpack of skinniness while I’m at it?

   Would I have wanted my parents to put me in a whole school full of stutterers so I wouldn’t feel different? I don’t know. Might have made me feel marginally better at the time, but it wouldn’t have helped me in the long run at adjusting to my difference. Certainly not enough benefit to warrant going to a “lesser” school academically.

   Plus, if we had all stuttered we just would have found other things to make fun of people about. Kids are cruel. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.

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   Jae Ran:
   October 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

   You just don’t get it, mccxxiii

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   Anne:
   October 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

   I’m going to delurk to say thank you. I appreciate and often agree with your point of view regarding racism and white privilege. Which is why I occasionally return to read your blog. Just wish that I had your talent of eloquently and intelligently explaining my views on this issue to friends and family. As a white mom to a non-white (Chinese) daughter, when I try to explain the reasons to my white friends why it is important for her to attend a school where there are others like her they dismiss me (”all kids have problems fitting in”) or assume I’m driving a wedge between white and non-white people. To use your words (I think) I would “strip naked at a truck stop” in order to send my daughter to a Chinese immersion school. Unfortunately, where I live, that resource is not available to her. There is something resembling it that is available once she is in elementary school; However, it is only a summer program at the local University. Better than nothing.

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   lisa:
   October 27th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

   I guess I read the school posts before there were comments and never went back-just because my head is so full with the school questions right now, and I don’t know the answers. Because I live in a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population, several of my friends who are bilingual are trying to convince me that Spanish immersion is the best option for my children, in that we have the resources to make bilingualism attainable (school programs, friends, plus jb is fluent), which will give them the foundation to then learn Mandarin.
   In my adoption training, I ended up in a small group discussion with two families, one was Hispanic with bio kids, adopting from Columbia, and commented that their kids were the only Hispanic kids at the top ranked school they attended. The other was very white, and I was startled (my prejudice, they didn’t strike me as people who thought hard about these things, which is why we have small groups to get to know people in a deeper way ; ) to realize that they had deliberately moved to a more diverse neighborhood for their adopted Hispanic kids. The ironic thing-these families discovered that they lived a couple of blocks away from each other, and both had the option of sending their kids to the other school-and both got pressure from their friends to do so, and each worried about the trade offs re education/diversity they were making (I am not making up a single piece of this-talk about an organic case study!).
   Afterwards, I shared this with jb (couples were put in separate groups, and I ended up with the 2 dads and he was with the 2 moms) and he said “well sure, they’re each doing what is best for their family-the Hispanic family can handle the loss of diversity for educational advantages because they have culture and racial identity in the home, and they will need the stronger academic records to compete in a white society. The very white family can’t afford to give up the diversity, because they can’t provide it for their kids at home. But their kids will move a little more fluidly in white society because it is more familiar through family, and the parents can make up educational deficits through extra stuff at home.”
   And, you know I have mixed feelings about being an “only.” I met the first person “like me” in 41 years last month, and it ain’t about us both having freckles. We were happy to meet each other, but we have both done ok with our self identity as “onlys”-including navigating the teasing and discrimination (why do we always talk about the teasing-it is so much easier to deal with that stuff than the subtle discrimination that you can’t prove). I was struck by Lisa F.’s comments (I went back and read them this morning ;). And it’s true that I think I benefitted from not being pigeonholed with all of the other kids with “deformities.” Because we ARE all different. ~lmc

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   lisa:
   October 27th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

   No idea where that smiley came from-must have moved down when I was editing…

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   lisa:
   October 27th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

   Oh, and one more note for midwesterners-Hispanics out here are treated similarly to African Americans in the midwest-it is horrendous. None of that “they’re such hard workers” stuff out here. ~lmc

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   cherylc:
   October 27th, 2007 at 3:39 pm

   I haven’t read all the preceding comments, and I agree with you completely. The only thing I could say is that disabilities come with their own horrible discrimination. It’s not the same thing as rascism, maybe, but it is horrible. And I think stuttering probably can fall under this category, although I do think the commenter above misses the point.

   I’m sorry you’ve had such a hard week.

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   cherylc:
   October 27th, 2007 at 3:41 pm

   Oh, I forgot to mention that I had both glasses and red hair as a kid (and still do) and I can vouch for that not being a big deal at all. I did get teased, but it *was* run of the mill kid teasing.

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   Lisa F.:
   October 27th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

   I do agree with what you are saying, and as a mother of two white boys, I am always actively looking for ways to give them experiences with people/kids of different races/experiences.

   I would like to note one thing, that has been noted above. And I think you get this, you just perhaps used a bit of a confusing example when you said, “glasses.” In general, yes. People with glasses or red hair are not systemically oppressed by society at large, although there might be some teasing in school.

   However, people with disabilities are a minority cultural group, and are systemically discriminated against by society at large. When unemployment is at 70%, the poverty rate is near 85%, most don’t have good healthcare options, and some are still in danger of being imprisoned, involuntarily sterilized or killed due to the hatred and fear toward their disability, their history has been hidden, erased and stolen, yadda yadda, yes. We most certainly are a minority group that faces some of the most severe oppression and discrimination around. A lot of times people say this to me: “Well, you can’t be a minority because all minorities have different about them that they are treated badly for is their skin color, which is unfair. You disabled people really DO have something different about you so you REALLY DO have to be treated differently(read: badly).” Um, yeah. You just proved my point.

   Which brings me to my last point: I don’t like the whole attitude some people take (and not you, Amber, but some other commenters) that kids will be kids and we all get teased for something. Sure, kids will say inappropriate things from time to time because they don’t know any better, but no kid should be teased for weeks/months/years on end for whatever reason (even red hair). This should not be accepted or tolerated.

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    Julie:
    October 27th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    I really appreciate your posts and wish I had the time and courage to write my response on my own blog. I never have enough of either. I would like to add the following article to your list of resources:

    http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html

    I think the biggest problem us White people have is that we are completely blind to white privilege. The above article really helped me begin to understand it.

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    egypt4:
    October 27th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    AmFam, I totally hear on the school stuff. We’re overseas now and I’ve been thinking a lot about where we want to be when we move back to the States: someplace where being black is normal, where there are enough black people around that black people aren’t any one thing, but just people.

    Of course, there are other important things to where we’ll live, but that’s the top qualification.

    They’ll have enough identity struggles as boys and young men adopted transracially and transnationally. We can make some things a bit easier for them.

    And yeah, a lot of white people, even well-intentioned liberal white people, cannot recognize white privilege.

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    atlasien:
    October 27th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    mccxxiii, you are a blithering idiot. You have a laissez-faire attitude towards bullying, you willfully ignore any kind of racial or Asian-American issues, cheerfully exploit disabled people in the service of your dumb-ass argument and accuse others of engaging in Oppression Olympics even though you jumped the starting gun on the first round.

    I would tell you the exact same thing face to face. And I am going to copy your comments and mock them on my blog and in groups because they are just that goddamn stupid.

    Sorry for flaming in your comments, Amber. And thanks for trying to educate these thick-headed bad apples. (P.S. I’m not referring to any of the more thoughtful comments on the intersection/comparison of disability and race such as Lisa’s)

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    Brittany:
    October 27th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    It is really an a-Ha! moment when a white person truly *sees* that white priviledge they carry. I say this as a white woman. We are raised not to see it. We are drilled about the US being a meritocracy, we are shown debates over affirmative action that generally confine themselves to college admissions and show a white kid mad because they lost their spot to a non-white person. Forget the numbers that show how rare that actually is.

    My point is that it can be pretty hard to see white priviledge when you are white. I see it all around me now, but it took me a good while to see it at all. And it takes a conscious mental effort to keep it up as a lens to view the world with.

    And I think that is at the heart of what we –or maybe I should just say I, myself as a white person– have trouble understanding about race. It is hard to understand how race is a constant lens to those of a minority when we don’t have that experience, however well meaning we are.

    As an example, I watch a young black boy many Saturdays while his mom is at work. (She’s in the Army, in a training program with my husband) When we go out, him, me and my two white children, people look at us. They look at us much more and differently than people look at us when he is not with us. I think many people assume that he is my son (especially since he sometimes calls me Mama, being 2 and imitating my kids and I don’t say anything about it) and are curiuos. I have not encountered any negative attention. But when we go out together race is always in my mind. You think about it when someone speaks a certain way to you. You think about it when they look at you. And this is what many white people don’t get. In many ways, I think transracial adoptive families understand it more than most white people can fathom, even when they want to. And you know what? I still don’t know what it’s truly like, because I am white and I am implicitly empowered in the culture I live in. I will probably never know what it is like to be a minority that holds such strong cultural, personal, historical, and racial implications, and I can drop the filter I’ve grasped at any time.

    Which is why I am so thankful and heartened to see posts like this. Thank you.

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    AmericanFamily:
    October 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    Just a quick note with respect to the commentary on disabilites and discrimination. I was certainly NOT trying to say that people who face teasing due to disability status are the same as people being teased due to red hair. In the original comment, the mother in question did not refer to the speech issue as a disability.

    If I were talking about a disability, I would have agreed that yes, there is a similar pattern and an additional dimension to the harm, as there is with racist teasing. Ableism and racism both are firmly entrenched in the institutional culture of this country. I just don’t write much about disabilities because I don’t know that I could do it much justice due to lack of personal knowledge.

    Also, another note: The original commenter (Ashley) sent me a really nice email this morning following up after she read the old post linked at the end of this post. I wish she would post it here. I was very impressed by her willingness to step back after her original defensiveness (and not so nice comment which she asked me to delete) and really hear what I was trying to say there.

    As for MCCXIII, sometimes people just want to keep believing what they believe. If she wants to believe that, whatever. It is funny though, that I don’t see a bunch of people of color lining up in my comments to insist that all teasing is the same.

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    Kate:
    October 27th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    Thanks, Lisa F., for your perspective.

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    mortimersmom:
    October 27th, 2007 at 8:38 pm

    thanks Amber, I really appreciated your answer and I thought your analogy with being Jewish was spot on. the sentence that had stuck with me in your original post was about the handful of Asians to be friends with. Though I know you better than that, something about it sounded a little l;ike social engineering to me. But I get it. It’s about putting the pople around them. As long as you don’t force the interactions then I am totally in agreement with your thinking.

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    Rachel:
    October 27th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    All I can say is Amen.

    Although I do think Asian kids also need to be around kids of other races (black, Latino, etc.)

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    AngelNicki:
    October 28th, 2007 at 1:00 am

    I am white (Italian if you want to be specific…) but a lot of children in my extended family are mixed with other races. I think that when I become a parent, no matter what my children’s ethnic or racial background is, I would want to send them to the most diverse school possible. To me the ideal school would be one that strived to embrace differences of all sorts. I think that if little kidsn get to be around all sorts of people, including people who look similar to them, people who look vastly different, people who come from both similar and different types of families, etc… they will not only grow up to be more accepting of differences in others, but they will learn not to tolerate being discriminated against, themselves.

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    Peg:
    October 28th, 2007 at 2:41 am

    “If you are white, I bet you can remember very clearly the first time you were a minority in a room full of people of color. ” I’m not sure if it was my first time, but it is my first memory of my first time: my older brother and sister put me in a tire against my will and rolled me down a hill. My memory of the second time: my sister sitting on my face to try to make me shut up. Do I remember? I remember VERY clearly. By the way, I was a white kid with glasses, freckles, AND a speech impediment (who also didn’t brush her teeth very often) and Amber, my friend, you are spot on.

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    Peg:
    October 28th, 2007 at 2:54 am

    Oh, and meeting someone else from a family like mine? That happened for me the first time when I was 30. THIRTY. It was a revelation. One that I wish I had had when I was, uh, three.

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    emi:
    October 28th, 2007 at 3:39 am

    thanks for your response.

    but don’t you think that being the minority is hard for everyone, not just for minority kids? and don’t you think that it is extremely cruel to put a white kid in a situation where s/he is the minority for 18+ years of his/her life just like you said it is for an asian kid?

    do you think that it is racist for a white kid to be uncomfortable being the minority and to want to me around people that look like himself/herself aka white people?

    after all, all people, regardless of race, gravitate toward people who look like them…..

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    Kari:
    October 28th, 2007 at 4:40 am

    This discussion is really making me think. I am completely open to the idea of my white bio son being the minority at school. For awhile I was thinking that I wish he would be a minority at a school of families many different backgrounds. I thought, he would certainly grow up being comfortable around Asian people already because his sister is Asian. But then I thought about that again. My brother is black (transracially adopted), and though I am comfortable with him - would I be comfortable in an environment where everyone else but me was black? I’m not sure. I would probably feel too conspicuous. Maybe my brother is comfortable in a room full of white people, though, because that is what he grew up with. Or possibly he feels conspicuous as well. Would *he* feel comfortable in an environment of all black people? I don’t even know. I’ll have to ask him about this. And I’m guessing maybe not, just because that hasn’t been his experience growing up. Which really solidifies for me what Amber is saying here. If my daughter grows up in an environment with mostly Asian kids (like 85% at the school we are looking at), she *will* be comfortable with it - which of course she should be!

    Lights are going off for me right now. I still have a lot to think about.

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    Kari:
    October 28th, 2007 at 5:46 am

    I’m back! I feel my pendulum swinging back now. I started to write my brother an email to hear more about his experiences growing up. When I was writing about deciding to live in a community that is mostly Asian, but has almost no Latino or African American people - it just sounded wrong to me. I don’t want to give up our current community that has such diversity. I feel really stuck right now. I feel like neither choice is right. Ugh!

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    Christie:
    October 28th, 2007 at 10:36 am

    I’m white and my kids are half white/ half Indian (Asian Indian). I moved to a new neighborhood in England that seemed nice in every respect except diversity - it was almost all white. I was running out of time to choose a neighborhood, and hoped we would get by. My son was the only non-white kid in his new class. Within months (at the age of 6) he was saying he didn’t like himself because of his “dark brown” skin color, he wanted to be pink like the other children, and the other kids were telling him he ate mud or poo. I spoke to the white teacher, and she just laughed the problem off, saying her white daughter often said she wanted brown skin like her Indian friends (her daughter went to a different school which had a few Indian children). A previous place we had lived had about 10% South Asian or part South Asian children (the rest mostly white), and even just 10% was *so* much better!

    Now my younger son is in Japanese school where he is the only non-East-Asian child, but I would much, much rather have him there than at a 99% white school like where we were in England. Even though he is the “only one”, at least everyone else is Asian, and he is half-Asian. I know Japan and India are far away from each other and the people are completely different, but as he is a half-Asian person I am so happy that he can have the experience of living in a world run by and for Asians… and we have been lucky because the school he goes to is much more open to diversity and proactive on teasing than that white school in England was.

    I was going to say that I would not want to put either of my children in a situation where they are the “only one” again, but then I remembered my younger son is now in just that situation. But he speaks a “valued” language (English), has an appearance which is considered good-looking by Japanese people, and has the same coloring and hair-type as his Japanese classmates. My older son was *much* worse off when he was the only (part) South Asian one in a class of white children. The only thing I can say is that you should avoid putting your children in a school where their racial make-up will mean they are looked down on and/or considered ugly or dirty.

    To the people making comments about red hair, glasses, stuttering, etc… are you more likely to be arrested or killed, searched, stopped by police, thought of as dirty, etc., because of these things? I say this as a white woman who was also teased a lot in a mostly white school, just for being “different”, funny-looking, and socially awkward. Yes, kids are cruel. But a white girl who is teased in school will still grow into a white woman who can take full advantage of her white priviledge in a variety of situations, all her life.

    Recently I was telling my older son some bad news - that when he grows up, if something bad has been done and there are only two people there - he and a white woman, then 9 out of 10 people will assume that it is *he* who did the bad thing, simply because he is a South Asian man. He was shocked and saddened to hear that the world is so racist. My son is no more a terrorist or a criminal than any stuttering, red-haired white girl with glasses. But if he and that white stuttering red-haired girl both happen to be doing their morning run at the time of a terrorist attack, who do you think may be shot AND KILLED by the police? He is not too quick on the uptake, so he probably wouldn’t even notice them saying, “Stop, police”. For his protection, I hope to avoid sending him to live in white-majority areas.

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    Ashley:
    October 28th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    As Amber wrote in a reply to this post, I am the one she has been referring to about the red hair and glasses. Frankly, the reason I haven’t posted back sooner was because I felt like an ass. AFter reading what she has written (both here and via email), and other posters here, I do see how completely off base I was in regards to my teasing/bullying I experienced. That does not mean it still didn’t hurt when I was younger or that it didn’t last for years, because it did. However, of all the years I have read AmFam, this truly was the first time I actually “got it”.

    As for my son, his IS different than mine since his is a disability, one that he will have all his life. His teasing and unacceptance has been around since he was in kindergarten, but this year (and the end of last) is when it started getting worse and he’s been beat up at school. I’ve heard that 4th grade is when it gets bad, so I shudder to think of it getting worse.

    Anyway, there was one poster above who pointed something out that made me realize how different it is with racial teasing, then I think the last poster really put it in cement with the racial profiling. My son wouldn’t get pulled over because he was stuttering. But in many similar regards, disabilities encounter the same experiences. The racial profiling and racism DOES add another layer to it though.

    Since Amber was nice enough to erase my first post that was quite defensive of my baby boy (as a mother, who wouldn’t be protective like that?), I will go ahead and post the email I wrote her. I am really grateful to Amber and some of the other poster for helping me to see the difference. It is truly vital since my daughter was adopted last year from China. Anyway, here is my email:

    “I did take your advice and read (so far) one of the links. It was an entry of yours that you wrote a few years ago. I have to say that this one struck me HARD,

    “If A wasn’t prodding me, I shudder to think of the number of times I would have invalidated my children before I really understood.”

    Wow, wow wow. I do NOT want to be that type of parent to Brooklyn AT ALL. I have a lot to munch on in regards to how this is different from JOsh’s pain, but there ARE so many similarities and how I help Josh will be at least some of the ways I will help Brooklyn if/when she encounters racial teasing. That has to at least count for something.

    All I know for now is that I do the best I can with Josh, because I have felt HIS pain by being bullied/teased and not accepted. But for Brooklyn, I will do the best I can for her and, as I pointed out, that is one reason I come to your blog. You are white like me and also from a family that didn’t speak of racism, but now HAS to deal with it because of our family. I previously beleived I would be able to handle issues with transracial adoption, but now I do realize more deeply that I have much further to go in my learning. This really should be something they address at agencies. Your post that you linked really opened my eyes. I still have to munch on this and how it correlates to Josh’s bullying and unacceptance. Same but different.”

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    lisa:
    October 28th, 2007 at 6:39 pm

    Just to reiterate, I agree with the need for diversity and to be around other Asians for my Chinese born daughter, but I still have a lot of questions about how to make imperfect choices.
    I’m not disabled, I’m “deformed”. At least 90% of the people I run into do not know the difference, sometimes treat me like I am mentally disabled due to my hand deformities, definitely offer to carry things for me-I have had people take bottles out of my hands to open them for me without me asking for help. I’ve been passed over for jobs because people were worried that clients might be offended by my appearance, and I have been hired for jobs by employers who were disappointed to discover that they didn’t get a tax credit for hiring me because I’m not disabled. I probably would not be mistaken for a terrorist, but I have been unfairly scapegoated in many jobs, including being fired for stealing (?!) when I worked for a Western Union in college.
    I have tried to find people “like me” in recent years, but, every time I find someone with hands like mine, I find that we are miles apart in our world view, and even in our feelings about our hands-I am an artist and a musician and I rely heavily on my hands and do not feel hindered in any way other than prejudice. This is not the experience of most of the people with whom I have tried to connect.
    So, this leaves me with lots of questions regarding what is best for my daughter? In most parts of the country, with a few exceptions, the choice is going to be between diversity, or a significant Asian population in a primarily white school-because, as Mr. A suggested, the top school is usually the preference for Asian American parents. Diversity is important to me whether my child is the same race as I am or not, because I just think it is important for everyone, including me. But my diverse neighborhood school is 60% Hispanic, 6% Native American, 3% AfAm, and 1% AsianAm, mostly adopted or Pacific Islander.
    So, how do we prioritize? And what really is a community of people who “look like us”? From my own experience, I am really uncertain… ~lmc

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    Lisa F.:
    October 28th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    (other) Lisa,

    This is just a side note, I think your characterization of yourself as having a “deformity” vs. being “disabled” is interesting. Not wrong, just interesting. I don’t know you, but what I gather you are saying is that your hand deformity does not functionally limit you in any way, your hands just look different.

    I don’t know if you are aware of this, but dispite how you see or label yourself (which is your own damned business), others will and have perceived you as having a disability. In the ADA, you are covered and your rights should be upheld. The ADA is supposed to cover those who are disabled via being unable to perform one or more major life activities or who are perceived as having a disability (regardless of whether you have a functional limitation.) I only tell you this because when these things that you mention happen to you, you ARE and should be covered by the ADA, and it doesn’t hurt to throw that out there if need be.

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    Rachel:
    October 29th, 2007 at 12:51 am

    To Emi, who said it would be cruel to put a white child in a minority-majority school. . .

    You are aware, I hope, that many nonwhite people in this country are “the only one” more or less everywhere they go. The only Asian at the boardroom table, or the only black kid at the birthday party.

    There is a difference between being in the minority in one situation (the white kid at a minority-majority school) and being in the minority in the culture as a whole. TRAs are in the minority both in their families and the larger culture, so I think it makes sense for parents to seek out opportunities for them to connect with other Asians and/ or TRAs.

    I do think it’s good for white people to have that feeling of discomfort, if only because it can give us a little more empathy for those who have to live it all the time.

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    lisa:
    October 29th, 2007 at 1:18 am

    Thanks Lisa-I have called the ADA before and been told I didn’t “qualify” for support. I’m sure I just talked to the wrong people on the wrong day, but you know-you get tired of arguing, so I’ve settled for distinguishing between “deformity” and disability. I would be interested to talk to you more, and I’ll email you offline. ~lmc

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    Christie:
    October 29th, 2007 at 1:21 am

    Ashley - I know, because I went through it too, that it is hard having been teased in school, and it can have a lasting effect. There are some negative lasting effects, like the fact that I will tend to assume that people didn’t actually mean to invite me somewhere (if there is some doubt), etc., but I think there can be positive effects, too, like gaining the ability to sympathize with other people who are teased, left out, or oppressed in some way. I think it works as long as we use our own experience as a tool to extrapolate and bear in mind how much worse it must be to be oppressed as a minority in a white-majority country, or as a disabled person. But of course it will not work if we think all teasing must be equal, and by doing so belittle the other people who are suffering from lasting oppression and negative stereotypes. Thank you for responding to what I said before, in your last comment - sorry if I seemed like I was targeting you, since I mentioned red hair and glasses. It is hard to keep track of who all is saying what in all these comments!

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    emi:
    October 29th, 2007 at 2:42 am

    rachel, i disagree with you. i am white and i chose to go to a university where i was a minority without actually knowing that i was going to be the minority. knowing what i do now, i would have picked a different university, and i would never ever subject my own kid to what i had to go through…

    consistently being called whitey, or “hey blondie!”, being asked what i’m doing here, being shown that i have no value because i am white and i am the minority or being told straight out that i should drop out and enroll to a university with “my people” (aka whites)…and guess with who i bonded? with other white people, who were going through the same thing as me…we all chose graduate programs where we’re the majority, and my fellow east/south asian colleagues probably tried to do the same.

    having gone through that experience, i have absolutely no pity for anybody who tells me that whites are not subjected to racism and for anyone who tries to invalidate my feelings. i felt like an outsider for 4 years of my life, never feeling like i belong with the in crown (the whites were the outgroup).

    having learned from my experience, i would never even think of putting my own baby through the same thing that i went through simply because people automatically assume that he’s going to grow up to be a white men and therefore, the oppressor.

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    ann:
    October 29th, 2007 at 5:17 am

    Interesting comments. I sometimes worry about the opposite - that my kids (who are Asian as I am) hang around too many other Asian kids. If they are always around Asians, will they have trouble feeling comfortable when they truly are in the minority? Their school is probably about 50% white, 35% Asian, and 15% other, so they are obviously around non-Asians all the time, but almost all of the friends they’ve chosen are Asian, surely for many of the reasons listed above. I grew up in a very non-Asian community so by default I had almost no Asian friends growing up, so at times it is so different for me to see my kids with mostly Asian friends. My sister-in-law voiced the same concern when I just saw her - her daughter is a senior in high school at a school in Northern CA that is almost completely Asian. She worries that her daughter has not had enough opportunities to interact with kids who are not like her. Diversity can be hard to find and when your minority group is the majority sometimes there’s a concern there too.

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    Lisa F.:
    October 29th, 2007 at 5:32 am

    Emi, I sympathize with your experience. And it is unfortunate when anyone is treated poorly. The choices we all have to make due to race and other issues in our society are difficult and I don’t think there is one perfect answer. However, I think what sometimes goes ignored is the damage that is caused to children when they are the majority. I don’t know if I am explaining this right, but I believe as damaging as it is to be ridiculed for your race, it is also damaging to be the one doing the ridiculing. It is just as damaging to a child’s development to be the bully as it is to be the bullied, albeit in a totally different and less obvious way. Even if a particular white kid is not actively saying or doing cruel things to children of different races, being in a situation your whole life where you are systematically made to be unaware of your privilege is in itself damaging developmentally to who a child becomes as a person. Since we don’t have, or very rarely have a perfect environment where all are treated equally and respectfully regardless of race, the best thing to do for everyone is to mix it up and allow people to experience and handle appropriately different types of people in different settings where their role changes from minority to majority at different times. You must have gotten some perspective from your experiences as a minority in college. Hopefully you have found something of value there to take from it.

    And again, I think there is a disconnect here. I am getting commenters mixed up as well, so I apologize if I’m off base here. But it seems like the same people who perhaps don’t see the advantage of putting a minority child in a diverse school where they are not so much the minority (even perhaps by sacrificing academic excellence), do see how terrible it would be for a white kid to be in the exact same minority situation.

    Emi, I don’t know if you understand the difference between being treated cruelly in an isolated setting (and not that that is appropriate or easy) and the almost global systemic oppression that minorities face in every facet of their lives. There is a huge difference.

    Diversity vs. Academic Excellence? What an unfortunate and in and of itself oppressive decision to have to make. I don’t know the right answer, and I suppose it is a personal thing among families. But I think what everyone is saying here is that for minorities, being exposed to diversity/other people like themselves is huge and necessary. If it doesn’t happen at school, it needs to happen somewhere.

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    Kohana:
    October 30th, 2007 at 12:42 am

    Sorry I didn’t read through the comments before I leave mine. I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the “Seven it Is” post you backlinked to. I’m struggling right now with the fact that my friends don’t believe my children experience discrimination and stereotyping from others. They think I am being too sensitive and I’m struggling to know what too sensitive is myself. I appreciated you communicating that for a white parent of a child that is a minority, this is something we world towards, not something we can arrive at. For me, it is a bumbling process and it’s good to know I’m not the only one stubbing my toes along the way.

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    Jessica:
    October 31st, 2007 at 6:53 am

    @ Emi

    It’s a pity that you had those bad experiences, but at the end of school, you entered back into a majority-white society, back into your comfort zone.

    So by experiencing this discomfort, you can see what minorities experience every single day.

    And for all the teasing you experienced, surely you had positive reinforcements elsewhere right?

    I mean, the President is white; Congress is mainly white; the majority of famous celebrities and entertainers is white… surely from these role models you were able to validate yourself right?

    Whereas for minorities, we don’t really have those role models here… ‘real life’ is basically like your college experience.

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    egypt4:
    October 31st, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    It bears noting (if it hasn’t been mentioned already) that not all disabled people are white and not all people of color are able-bodied. People of color who are disabled (and perhaps wear glasses or whatever) often deal with multiple layers of teasing, harassment, etc. Of course we all know this when we think about it, but I didn’t see anyone raise the point. These are not mutually exclusive categories.

    I live in the Middle East, in Egypt, and when I ride the metro each day, I’m surrounded by Egyptians, most Muslim women wearing headscarves. My lack of headscarf denotes me as non-Muslim, and everything else about me (my skin color, my clothes, my hair) tells people I am western, probably American. And even though I am in the minority by far, I definitely still benefit from white/western privilege. Here people regard white foreigners as the elites (even if they don’t like us), so we’re accorded privileges (in a very classist society) that I’m not sure are extended to any black people, whether Egyptian, Kenyan, South African, British, or American.

    So white people can still benefit from white privilege even when we are the minority.

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