How to Talk to your Children about Injustice By Susan Meister
There is a song from the famous 1958 musical, “South Pacific,” that says a lot about the world we find ourselves in at this very moment. Here is the first verse: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear You’ve got to be taught from year to year…. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade You’ve got to be carefully taught.” Most of you reading this would never even suggest to your children that they should dislike or be afraid of anyone who does not look like them. Most of us would deny that we have any prejudices at all, and thus would surely never pass them on to our children. However, valid studies show that we all have what is called implicit biases. Implicit biases are prejudices that unconsciously affect our decisions, even if they do not align with our de-
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clared beliefs. Everyone has such biases, whether they involve characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, or appearance. They are molded over the course of a lifetime beginning at a very early age. How early? The song continues: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late Before you are six or seven or eight…” And this is what is startling. Young children, beginning as early as six months, favor people who look like their caregivers. They register differences in color, gender, and even age. As they grow, they refine their perceptions through the books they are read, the television characters they see, the movies they watch. Through a combination of what they hear and see at home and what they observe around them, they develop their own preferences for the people who surround them. Clearly, if a white child rarely plays with a black child, or goes to a school that is predominantly white, or reads comics in which the heroes
are mostly white and the bad people are black, their view of the world order will be very different from children who have been brought up with multicultural exposure. Even with such exposure, there are many counter influences that surround us, such as those television shows and movies already mentioned, the books they read, and even the way certain news is covered. The environment is rarely devoid of racial or gender bias; it is our response to it when we see it that counts. That response is evident even to the youngest child. Certainly the books that are read to young children, even the toys they play with, can be highly influential, and for a long time, there were few that addressed inclusivity. This, fortunately, is changing. Major toy manufacturers are offering black dolls instead of the procession of white, blonde, Barbie types and there is evidence that this change affects children’s response to racial differences in a positive way. The highly influential animation industry is also altering many of the characMONTEREY BAY PARENT • july 2020
