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Thread: Racist Toddlers

  1. #21
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by NCB View Post
    Jane Lane, the author, who is not a member of NCB staff, but an advocate worker for racial equality in the early years sector, said: ‘Children are like sponges and the early years of their lives are critical for helping them understand and learn to respect the opinions, differences, similarities and needs of others.’
    In my experience children make references to brown skin in neutral terms in the same way as they might refer to curly hair, brown eyes, freckles or tallness, say, unless they've picked up negative connotations from the adults around them.
    After reading a book featuring Asian characters one little girl remarked to me, "My daddy doesn't like brown people." Luckily, I think she was already learning to be a bit puzzled by his attitude.

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by jivecat View Post
    After reading a book featuring Asian characters one little girl remarked to me, "My daddy doesn't like brown people." Luckily, I think she was already learning to be a bit puzzled by his attitude.
    Yeah, parents can be negative, but I think children can sometimes become negative about 'brown' people just by watching the news.

    My 11 year old has often commented that the criminals in the day to day news, ie knife criminals, etc, tend to be black.

    Is that the start of a racist attitude or just an observation that in his eyes, black people are more likely to be criminals that white people*?

    *I'm not suggesting this is the case, it's just how it comes across on the news in his eyes.

    Tony Blair once said "people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

    Whether that is true or not, kids will listen to the Prime Ministers views.
    Last edited by Double Trouble; 9th-July-2008 at 03:40 PM.

  3. #23
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    As I said in my original post, I suspected an element of sensationalising in the BBC story. Nevertheless, I still don't buy the concept of food preferences betraying racist potential.

    If you care to look at my ironic post earlier in this thread, the idea that adults, never mind children, make food choices based on any concept of racism is weak. I suspect even strong BNP supporters have little problem scoffing down a curry with their lagers. The idea that a pre-school child would make or develop such an association, is even stranger and not exactly borne out by modern society. Empirical evidence: I hated things like curry and even pasta as a kid (fussy little sod that I was). Hasn't contributed to my opinion of any ethnic group in anything other than a positive way as I "discovered" different foods (with one exception*) and I seriously doubt I'm atypical.

    Indeed, to me the idea of examining a young child's dietary leanings in such a way is dangerously close to counter-productive policy. To look at the original text, as you suggest:
    Indications of racial prejudice may not always be perceived as such. Indeed it is important always to pursue such indications with a view to ascertaining the reasons for them. For example, a child may react negatively to a culinary tradition other than her own by saying ‘Yuk’. This may mean a lack of familiarity with any food not seen or eaten before or, more seriously, a reaction to food associated with people from a particular ethnic or cultural community. Care is always needed in following up such reactions to differentiate very clearly between a child’s natural apprehension and racial prejudice.
    This analysis seems to suggest that the child might only dislike food because either a) it's apprehensive about it, or b) it doesn't like the culture from which it originates. The basic concept that it might, er, not like the taste doesn't seem to be addressed here.
    So by characterising their dislike of such foods as somehow "morally" wrong, you could start pushing a young child into an antagonistic attitude. In the toddler's head:
    I don't like that food. You're telling me that not eating that food is insulting those people. But what do those people have to do with that food. I don't like that food. You want me to eat it to make those people I've never met feel happy. But I don't like that food.
    And so on - the possibilities for negative association are there. And I suspect the average toddler's sense of taste is much stronger than either their sense of morality, or their sense of duty to people they've never met.

    In short, I still think it's daft even after having read the original text.

    *Sardinians are clinically insane and deserve to be quarantined from the rest of the planet forever.

  4. #24
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    My 11 year old has often commented that the criminals in the day to day news, ie knife criminals, etc, tend to be black.

    Is that the start of a racist attitude or just an observation that in his eyes, black people are more likely to be criminals that white people*?
    Young children tend to speak as they find and might notice things that grown ups might prefer to quietly ignore.

    Whether his observations reflect objective fact or a bias in news-reporting, or some other factor, is something that he's going to have great difficulty in working out at age 11. So education which deals with the issues is important.

  5. #25
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by NCB View Post
    ‘This book is being funded by NCB from book sales alone – and not from government funding or from any grants, as has also been reported. The sales have been excellent so far which goes to show there is an acknowledged need for books like it. ’
    Of course the sales of the book may reflect the misrepresentation of it in the media, i.e. it sounded more interesting than it actually is

    Jane Lane, the author, who is not a member of NCB staff, but an advocate worker for racial equality in the early years sector, said: ‘Children are like sponges and the early years of their lives are critical for helping them understand and learn to respect the opinions, differences, similarities and needs of others.’
    Admirable, but skin colour, facial features and other physical characteristics
    are always going to be possible subjects of a childs comments - no individual insulting comments should be singled out as worse than others imho. As Jane says, children are like sponges and will pick up on the import adults put on these things - things which really are NOT important. In this situation its not the children that are the problem, its the adults.

    Quote Originally Posted by jivecat View Post
    In my experience children make references to brown skin in neutral terms in the same way as they might refer to curly hair, brown eyes, freckles or tallness, say, unless they've picked up negative connotations from the adults around them.
    After reading a book featuring Asian characters one little girl remarked to me, "My daddy doesn't like brown people." Luckily, I think she was already learning to be a bit puzzled by his attitude.
    and i think thats all you need to do. Reinforce that puzzlement

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    Yeah, parents can be negative, but I think children can sometimes become negative about 'brown' people just by watching the news.
    A good point, but everyone has to put up with that. Its natural to be a little bit xenophobic (those people are different...ohh im scared etc...) - whats more important is where you do meet people who are different, it doesnt bother you. We live in a biased world, the wealthiest western nations are "traditionally white" but that detail is not particularly important and we should stop acting as if it is.

    My 11 year old has often commented that the criminals in the day to day news, ie knife criminals, etc, tend to be black.

    Is that the start of a racist attitude or just an observation that in his eyes, black people are more likely to be criminals that white people*?

    He is only saying what he sees, on its own it will not make him a racist. Criminals have all got some sort of skin colour (unless they are transparent) and he will also come across all sorts of other bits of information about criminals - most are male, most are poor, most are over 5foot5, most know who Yoda is - or whatever info you can glean from watching the news. The media can help racism along by going on about skin colour or ethnicity though, and occasionally do

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Having worked in a kindergarten for a seventeen year stretch the whole thing is totally ludicrous. Toddlers don't have underlying meanings to things that they say, everything is still a learning curve, they either like things or they don't.

    The reaction they give to things they haven't tried before is totally spontaneous. I still cannot get over the time we introduced fruit instead of biscuits, for healthy eating purposes, the amount of children that had never seen a pineapple before was amazing and I must say some of their comments at the time could have been misconstrued quite easily.

    They certainly don't differentiate between each other, the only difference between them being if you are a boy or a girl. Negative comments only come from what they pick up from home and unfortunately it is very hard to break that hereditary loop.

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Stuart M View Post
    Another for the "It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!" brigade to blow a fuse over. Whilst I'm sure the journalist has cherry-picked from the report, it's still pretty hilarious IMO.

    Nursery Alert for Racist Toddlers
    How silly..

    From the report...

    "A child may react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying, 'Yuck!"'.

    um, er, not racist... Go back to Jamie Oliver, trying to get good food served in schools, instead of the chips and processed rubbish.

    Are we now going to say it is racist, that they said "yuck" to healthy UK food???

    My son said "yuck" to loads of foods, until he came to live with me and I served up a variety, and also got him to cook.
    So was he racist - NO - he had set views on foods he had not tried.

    He now cooks a world wide variety of foods.

    We do chinko, eyetight, greeko, wog, aussie, thai, korean, british, irish, indian, Armenian, Lithuanian...

    Never done the french stuff... but why would you?

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin View Post
    .............We do chinko, eyetight, greeko, wog, aussie, thai, korean, british, irish, indian, Armenian, Lithuanian...

    Never done the french stuff... but why would you?
    did you leave out
    Italian
    Spanish
    US
    etc
    deliberately or racially?

  9. #29
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by dep View Post
    did you leave out
    Italian
    Spanish
    US
    etc
    deliberately or racially?
    what did you think eyetight was and he was...er...joking

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    what did you think eyetight was and he was...er...joking
    Indeed - and yes, it was intended as humour... hence the

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    oh dear ...Dep may make the ultimate faux pas by offending entirely the wrong people at cocktail parties

  12. #32
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Gav View Post
    DT's lovely daughter has often told me I have a big nose, I'm not offended by that as I do have a big nose. If she called me a big nosed b4sta4rd, I might be offended.
    Not to mention lost for a retort.

  13. #33
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Where do you suppose NCB dances?

  14. #34
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Stuart M View Post
    {snip lengthy analysis}[/SIZE]
    The point, surely, is this.

    Kids routinely say 'yuck' about food they haven't encountered before.

    Racists routinely say negative things about people of whose ethnic background they disapprove.

    There may well be people who reject 'ethnic' food as part of a repugnant philosophy - "goat curry is eaten by Caribbean n****s (insert racial epithet), therefore it is tainted by association".

    It seems to me perfectly likely that a young child, who has not yet learned that its racist parents hold views which are outdated and disparaged by society at large, might make comments of the kind set out in the NCB book.

    The illustration is made for the purpose of emphasising that it is important to ascertain the emotion that led to the expression of disgust, rather then reaching a knee jerk conclusion that it is racist in origin.

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin View Post
    How silly..

    From the report...

    "A child may react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying, 'Yuck!"'.

    um, er, not racist...
    Exactamundo. Rather the point that the original book is making.

  16. #36
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Where do you suppose NCB dances?
    Well assuming "NCB" represents the official view of the organisation, it seems reasonable for them to register and put forward the official response.

    Although this is (ostensibly ) a dance forum, it's not as if the thread is about dancing, after all.

    I'm more intrigued to know how they found it though - are they going through all such threads on all forums to find anyone that's discussing the issue? I'd have thought dance forums would be fairly far down the list.
    Love dance, will travel

  17. #37
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    I've got the hump now.
    Deformity...ist....

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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Not to mention lost for a retort.
    Some of us choose to not use witty replies on 6 year old girls.

  19. #39
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    Well assuming "NCB" represents the official view of the organisation, it seems reasonable for them to register and put forward the official response.

    Although this is (ostensibly ) a dance forum, it's not as if the thread is about dancing, after all.

    I'm more intrigued to know how they found it though - are they going through all such threads on all forums to find anyone that's discussing the issue? I'd have thought dance forums would be fairly far down the list.
    type in "Racist Toddlers Forum" in google and currently it is at the bottom of the 8th page...

    Fairly easy to find.

    I guess if it is your research area, or you have an interest in who is talking about it... something you might do...

  20. #40
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    Re: Racist Toddlers

    Quote Originally Posted by Gav View Post
    Some of us choose to not use witty replies on 6 year old girls.
    Ri-ight.

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