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<p>I totally agree.</p>
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<p>That’s appalling. It sounds to me like the black girl is the one who is a racist.</p>
<p>I had a summer job once working with kids some of whom were black, (I’m white). The parents of the black kids didn’t like me much. It’s a long story but I could never do anything right. I sent one of the kids home once because he was rifling through my backpack which was in an area he wasn’t even supposed to be in. His mom was furious with me and labeled me a racist.</p>
<p>So one of the girls repeated the accusation to me and I just told her that I hoped I wasn’t and I tried not to be. She was mad and stormed off the the next day she came back and said she wasn’t mad anymore. I wasn’t mad either and that was the end of it. I liked her and while I have bad memories of that summer I have fond memories of her in particular.</p>
<p>Race comes up. If you are being accused of racisim it is best to take an honest look at yourself and see if there is any merit to the accusations. If there are then try to do better in the future. If there aren’t then just hope the other person gets over it.</p>
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I think that particular girl was angry, lonely and miserable. It make her absolutely crazy that my husband volunteered at the school regularly.</p>
<p>That article was a gross, gross oversimplification of what the authors found. I admit that I have not read NurtureShock, but a quick search for ‘NurtureShock’ produced a blog entry titled “The Four Conditions of Intergroup Contact,” written by the same authors.</p>
<p>Mssr. Liu was quite sloppy to insinuate a causal relationship between parents’ not talking about race and the likelihood of their children becoming racists in the future.</p>
<p>I deliberately didn’t talk about race with my (white) children when they were very young. We would go to playgrounds and they would play with whoever was willing. I didn’t like referring to the “black” girl or boy, I used their names. I was probably overly sensitive in that I felt like making a point of calling them “the black kid” was assigning them a status of “different,” and I figured that my kids were smart enough to see that they looked different. Although my daughter, dizzy little thing that she was, identified everyone by the color of their clothes, which her yelling, “Hey, black boy!” to a white boy wearing black sweats. She was three, ok?</p>
<p>She went to a Catholic grammar school,predominantly white, but had three black girlfriends. One was the smartest girl in the class, one was and still is what you would call a bada@@, and one was a Haitian girl who’s family didn’t trust white people. None of these girls were friends with each other.By then, I wasn’t so much avoiding talking about race as downplaying it. I gasped when I overheard D saying to her friend, “I love your hair, F; it’s so greasy!” But her friend responded,“That’s because I put hair grease in it, silly!” That girl’s mother told me that I was the only mother who let her daughter visit F at F’s house in a black neighborhood, as opposed to inviting the child to the white neighborhood. This obviously meant a lot to the little girl, to have sleepovers like anyone else. And BadA@@ invited our family to a birthday party,where we were the only whites out of about 200 people, except for the people that operated the moon bounce. By then, D was in 4th grade, and I told her that if she felt outnumbered, just think how BadA@@ must feel every day at school. That day is a great memory, albeit filled with some hilarious cultural missteps on our part.</p>
<p>My son didn’t make any black friends until middle school. After kindergarten he went to public school, and we didn’t have a very diverse town. In fact, it has jokingly been referred to as “White (name of town).” The few black students were very different from the Catholic school girls D hung out with, and they tended to move away after a year or less. I felt kind of sorry that S didn’t get a chance to meet different kinds of people in our white bread community, but I didn’t do much about it. In middle school, he experienced some issues with “tough” black boys, but for the most part they resolved themselves, and he socialized with a reasonably mixed group at lunch and at kid’s homes. He goes to a different high school now, but when he visits the high school that most of his old classmates attend, some of the black kids won’t speak to him, not even hello. I think there may be a lot of pressure for black kids in a white school not to lose their identity by hanging out with white kids. As for the white kids, I don’t know if they even care, except for some that may be truly racist.</p>
<p>I just don’t know. Racism runs deep in this country, but I believe that there are people of good will who want to accept people who are different. I tried to raise my children without hate, because I don’t feel hate. But you can’t force people to be friends just because it would be nice. People are too complicated for that. This is something I think about a lot, because my town may be white, but my state is not, and I grew up in a diverse town. I don’t think this study is conclusive at all.</p>
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<p>I think you’ve just proven the point of the study. I’m not trying to pick on one poster by singling out this quote, because I do believe that when I hear people say this, or some version of it, it is sincerely meant. I also don’t question people’s motives who avoid mentions of race as if walking on eggshells. It is interesting that a some black people are much more comfortable bringing race or ethnicity into practically every sentence. Sometimes in a pretty vulgar way, especially the kids, but no one seems to take offense. I wonder if the study included them? (Wired magazine? I’m thinking NOT.)</p>
<p>" deliberately didn’t talk about race with my (white) children when they were very young. We would go to playgrounds and they would play with whoever was willing. I didn’t like referring to the “black” girl or boy, I used their names. I was probably overly sensitive in that I felt like making a point of calling them “the black kid” was assigning them a status of “different,” and I figured that my kids were smart enough to see that they looked different. "</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that many people who don’t use race as descriptors are OK with using physical characteristics like hair color, glasses, gender, braces or height as descriptors. By not using race as a descriptor, one is acting like there’s something wrong with a person’s race. For instance, we normally wouldn’t say, “The person with buck teeth” or the “fat person” as a descriptor because we’ve been taught that such physical characteristics are negative so it’s not nice to comment on them.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no problem with anyone pointing me out as “that black woman over there,” when, for instance, I’m one of the few black people present. I wouldn’t be insulted or embarrassed. It would be far more efficient – depending on who else is around – than describing me as “the woman over there of medium height and build.”</p>
<p>I’m not ashamed or embarrassed of being African American. No reason for anyone to avoid mentioning it if they’re trying to identify me in a crowd in which most people don’t look like me, for instance.</p>
<p>mousegray – interesting post. I hope I’m not misinterpreting it.</p>
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<p>I’ve seen this too and in my opinion it is too politically incorrect to point it out, and I’m sure the study didn’t include them.</p>
<p>Race is a touchy subject and whatever strategy people choose to take in dealing with it can be a no win situation. I think it is important to remember that any of us are capable or racism. If someone points it out to us we should listen to them with an open mind and then evaluate whether their position has merit or not. If it does then we have learned something about ourselves.</p>
<p>I remember a conversation here a while back where many of us talked about different ways we described people who were black or African American. Some were offended being referred that way; some weren’t. It was interesting.</p>
<p>I work with kids all sizes, colors, religions and who have a multiple array of languages they speak. Kids don’t seem to be as fazed about it, as we adults can be.</p>
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<p>That’s interesting. My husband and I were meeting my dad and stepmom at a bar in my hometown for dinner and drinks, and we got there before they did. We were seated in a far corner of the busy, maze-like bar, and the hostess asked for a description of my dad and stepmom (who were regulars at this bar) so she could lead them to our table. My husband sputtered for a few seconds until I finally said, “Guy with a beard! Walks with a leg brace!” and the hostess was like, “Oh, him! Yeah, I’ll send them over.”</p>
<p>My brother and I are the only ones we know of who are matter-of-fact about disability… It’s always been ‘normal’ to us. As a toddler, I called my dad’s crutches “dit-durrs”. It’s like being a redhead. Defining, and different, but… not so heavy, I suppose.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s an experience I can connect to, to understand how to fold racial differences into my mind. It really troubles me sometimes, not knowing how to respond… Should my mind acknowledge race? Should I be colorblind? How do I avoid imposing more hurt to a group of people who’ve been so hurt in the past?</p>
<p>Pointing someone out by visible features, whether that’s the skin color, color/style of clothing, height, etc. just makes sense. I don’t see why anyone would take offense to that. It’d be pretty hard to point someone out of a crowd if you couldn’t come up with attributes that distinguish them from the others surrounding them. If I was in Japan or Nigeria I wouldn’t mind anyone pointing me out as that nice looking white man (okay - that white guy). It really has nothing to do with race. </p>
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Why “dit-durrs”?</p>
<p>I admit that I was overly sensitive about this when the kids were younger. I guess I noticed that many whites would tell a story about, say, a “black guy” at the bank, where his race had nothing to do with the story. I wouldn’t refuse to describe someone by their race, but I didn’t want to make that a big focus. I wanted to let my kids have their own impressions. The circumstances I was trying to describe didn’t involve pointing someone out in a crowd.</p>
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<p>His favorite crutches were wooden, and they creaked loudly whenever he’d bear down on them. Dit-durr was my two-year-old attempt at onomatopoeia.</p>
<p>(For what it’s worth, my word for the grocery store was also “geesadada”. I’m told I was in a hurry to talk as a kiddo but given the absence of something from my vocabulary, I was always willing to make something up.)</p>
<p>“I guess I noticed that many whites would tell a story about, say, a “black guy” at the bank, where his race had nothing to do with the story.”</p>
<p>I see where you’re coming from, and I agree. I’ve noticed that people who include race in that way tend to do so when there is something inappropriate about the person whose race they’re mentioning.</p>
<p>That’s funny aibarr and you even taught me a new word today - ‘onomatopoeia’.</p>
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<p>That always bothers me. If any “judge a book by its cover” is necessary to the anecdote, why not just say something like, “This punk of a kid at the bank” or “A well-dressed gentleman at the bank” or something like that? There are disrespectful little snots of every race, ethnicity, and creed prowling the streets, just as there are kind, righteous citizens of every race, ethnicity, and creed walking among us. I guess as a physical descriptor, it’s all right, but when someone’s reading something into it or making judgments based upon those physical descriptors, it’s no longer just a physical descriptor–it’s a prejudice.</p>
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<p>You can always count on me for your weird-word-of-the-day needs! 
It drives my boss bananners.</p>
<p>Parents dont need to talk with young kids about race if they walk the walk. In my experience the most open tolerant non-racist -whatever you want to call it-- kids are from families where the parents regularly interact with people of other races or ethnicities AS PEERS. Kids need to see from the youngest age that their parents have friends, church members, coworkers, visitors at their homes, etc, who are from different groups. If kids grow up seeing ethnic diverstity as a regular normal part of life that Mom and Dad regularly do they will become far more focused on behavior and common interests as they choose thier friends and far less on skin color or relgiion or nationality or whatnot. But of course this means “work” in some sense for the parents who may be unwilling, unable, or just dont know how to accomplish this, especially w/o feeling fake.</p>
<p>BigAppleDaddy – I hope anyone, even parents, does not have some sort of racial, ethnic goal in mind when choosing their circle of friends. If I ever found out that someone sought me out as a friend because of my race or ethnicity I would be really offended.</p>
<p>I think you should choose your friends based on who you enjoy being around and if they all happen to be of your race and someone else calls you a racist because of that then that is their problem.</p>
<p>Of course you shouldnt pick your friends, acquaintinces, etc solely on race. That’s the “fake” part I was referring to. </p>
<p>But I’d think you might think something slightly amiss if among all your interests, hobbies, work, sports, church, civic activities, etc., you always find yourself hanging out with people who are always just like you. Unless you live and work an exteremely homogeneous life (and that’s possible in some parts of the country though increasingly less so) I think its highly unlikley that you’ll never meet someone of another ethnicity that shares any of your interests. The point is not to explicitly go looking to met a Jew or make friends with a black, or find a Mexican you can hang out with. It’s about being open to allowing that to happen naturally and MODELING it for your children. Kids pay attention to what their pareents do, whether its around issues of race or anything else.</p>
<p>Very well said.</p>