Start Seeing Diversity Blog: "We Don't Say Those Words in Class!"

Last night, my friend with her daughter invited me to go shopping with them in a shopping mall where lots of fancy clothes were display. When we came to the Children's zone, we could see there were two or three child models with clothes on shown in the window in each shop. All of sudden, the daughter of my friend, 5-years-old, screamed with a scared tone "Ah.....", which scared my friend and me. My friend worried and asked her what happened. The daughter pointed to one of child model in the window and said, "He is black! When I turned my head and saw the black one, I got scared." Knowing that her daughter did not get hurt, my friend responded, "But you should not scream loud indoors. It is not appropriate." Then without any comment on what the daughter said about the black child model, they walked away from that window show. 

The mom focused on her daughter's behavior of screaming but neglected her scare of the black child model. The hidden message conveyed in this example is that it is ok to be scared of the black. This reminds me of a Chinese saying that my friend would always said about her daughter, "A white complexion is powerful enough to hide seven faults." This is a Chinese traditional and stereotypical concept of beauty, which indicates bias about the color of skin and racism. The daughter did not independently learn this bias; she learned from the people and the environment around her. Because of her white complexion, she often heard compliments, which formed her misconception of beauty and developed her bias toward the black. 

Actually, after shopping with my friend and her daughter, I texted to my friend and told her about the issue that I observed and my thoughts about the bias that was hidden in their communication. Later on, she told me that she did not notice at all her bias she had and never thought that she would have racism and affect her daughter. Our open communication helped her recognize her bias. Then I suggest her to read some books and show some pictures about diverse people and culture so that they could be together to learn the similarities and differences between and among people and unlearn biases. That is I think what an anti-bias educator should do to--help people recognize the existence of bias and diversity (Laureate Education, n.d.).

Reference:

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Start seeing diversity: Race/ethnicity [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu