Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland, what does all these people have in common? They have all lost their lives due to racial injustices and inequality. Although slavery ended 150 years ago, and segregation ended around 51 years ago, the relationship between African Americans and whites have steadily been filled with injustice and oppression. In Brownies by ZZ Packer, is a story about a younger group of girl scouts (one African American group and one Caucasian group) campers who has a slight experience with racism. At the end of the story, the narrator, Laurel (also known as Snot) says, “There is something mean in this world and I can not stop it. Laurel was right in some aspects. While referring to racism being “something mean in this world”. Racism is first and foremost a cultural assumption—it is rooted deeply in culture. For some people the term is synonymous with “White people” For others, the term racism stands for personal prejudice and discrimination. For still others, it stands for any race awareness or the absence of color blindness. For another group racism stands for institutional practices that maintain racial inequalities (Bowser, 1995,p xi) Modern racism, according to James Waller in Face to Face, is more elusive, or subtle than what you would consider “older racism”. It stays around due to how most people were raised based off of these terrible stereotypes placed on African Americans or any other minority in the United States. It is intensified by how whites believe that there is no racism in America, which results in them being careless about the needs of minorities for equalized treatment. Racism today has a huge effect on life indicators such as ones economic status, educational status, and how one may feel about themself. “We had all been taught that adulthood was full of sorrow and pain, taxes and bills, dreaded work and dealings with whites” says Laurel. Racism does not only exist in adult life, it can also be found in young children. There has been many research done that confirms that children develop an awareness of oppression and racial stereotypes at an early age. Previously it had been thought that young children are incapable of understanding racial injustices or prejudice, or that young children have not develop the adult meanings of race; in essence saying that young children can not engage in racist behavior. Since racism still exists at all levels of society and is interwoven in all aspects of American social life, it is virtually hard and impossible for young children to either miss it or ignore it. Children are deluged with it the instant the enter society. (Van Ausdale, 2001, p.189-190). In “The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism” By Debra Van Ausdale and Joe Feagin did an experiment using data on fifty eight preschool children from ages ranging from three to six in a diverse day care center, demonstrate how children of this age has awareness and knowledge of race in their peer relationships. What she found was “Not surprisingly, all children in this society learn at an early age that, generally speaking , whiteness is privileged and darkness is not—and thus their choices in this regard are usually not surprising” (Van Ausdale,2001 p.57) In the 1940’s psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark designed and
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The experiment included children ranging from ages three to seven and four dolls that were identical in every sense except for color. The children were then asked to identify the races of the doll and to choose a color they would prefer. The majority of the children picked the white doll and when asked why, they said that being white is better, while adding numerous of positive characteristic to the white doll. The characteristics that the white doll received were words like: “pretty, nice, sweet, rich, fun” while the black doll just received words like: “nice, and fun” . The experiment concluded that “prejudice, discrimination and segregation, created a feeling of inferiority among African American children and damages their self-esteem. Recently, (2010) the same doll experiment was replicated by Anderson CNN to see if the same results would be
The experiment included children ranging from ages three to seven and four dolls that were identical in every sense except for color. The children were then asked to identify the races of the doll and to choose a color they would prefer. The majority of the children picked the white doll and when asked why, they said that being white is better, while adding numerous of positive characteristic to the white doll. The characteristics that the white doll received were words like: “pretty, nice, sweet, rich, fun” while the black doll just received words like: “nice, and fun” . The experiment concluded that “prejudice, discrimination and segregation, created a feeling of inferiority among African American children and damages their self-esteem. Recently, (2010) the same doll experiment was replicated by Anderson CNN to see if the same results would be