August 4, 2010
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FIRST ENTRY INTO RACE RELATIONS
I know, I know – I haven’t updated in sooo long.
Life just gets in the way so much these days that writing about it is the last thing on my mind. I barely even watch TV these days anymore.
But something recently came up that I thought was pretty interesting to pass along. It was my first entry into the topic of skin color with Avery when we were playing a board game called, “Guess Who”.
Each player starts the game with a board that includes cartoon images of 24 people with different faces/traits/accessories, etc.
Each player selects a card of their choice from a separate pile of cards containing the same 24 images.
The object of the game is to be the first to determine the character your opponent has selected.
As you can see, I chose ‘CONNOR’.
The players then take turns in asking strategic questions to eliminate the potential tiles:
AVERY: “Does your person have white hair?”
ME: “No”
Then she would close the tiles with people who possessed white hair.
AVERY: “Is your person a Girl?”
ME: “No”
Then she would eliminate all images of girls, etc.
Finally when she got down to her last two tiles, she couldn’t think up of any more questions.
I tried to help, “Do they have different color hair, facial features, a hat, glasses, eye color?
She answered, “They’re the same.”
Confused, I looked at the two tiles she had remaining:
Sigh.
I wanted to say: “Yes, honey. They ARE the same” to keep her innocence intact.
This game should be called, “Guess Who’s PROFILING?”
Comments (8)
haha =) Wow, sounds like Avery’s all grown up!! I remember that game as a kid. Glad to know that you are still alive!
Haven’t heard of this game before but it sure seems to have not been very well thought-out. Maybe it is designed to help train Arizona law enforcement officers. LOL
lol!
I had this game when I was little! (back in the 90s) I never noticed this particular bit about the game before, but I did notice that there were only four girls to choose from.
I used to play the travel edition of “Guess Who?”. Another good and insightful entry, with the perspective of a young child. Thank you for sharing.
This proves that kids are color blind. If you’re black, asian, latino, little kids accept you. It isn’t until we become older that people are taught to hate each other for the color of their skin. It’s sad.
Hi Parry. I enjoyed reading “Secret Identities” and am a fan of The New Press books. They have a great book “Explaining Racism To My Daughter” that maybe you and Avery can read together.
I played Guess Who as a kid too. I think a game between two adults would yield interesting questions when it comes to trying to identify a character.
Great post Parry (thank you angryasianman.com for the heads up on this one). I remember playing this game growing up, fairly innocent to the complicated implications it makes about identity, particularly race and gender (I imagine age might be another factor that could incite some interesting observations).
I do recall as youthinasia613 mentioned that one of the better (profiling?) strategies was to ask early on if the card was a boy or a girl because it either eliminated all but a handful of options or eliminated just a few.
On your decision to “keep her innocence intact,” I’ll start off by saying I don’t know how old Avery is (I suppose I could do some homework on that via your xanga, but my point I think goes beyond that). Nor am I a parent, or in much of any way particularly responsible for the social development of any specific child (though I do have a lot of younger cousins I play with on a regular basis). All that said, that instance may have been an opportunity to talk about race, color, difference in more explicit ways than the usual paradigm of “colorblindness” and “we’re all equal” or “God loves/made us all the same”(even ethnicity, and other aspects of “other”ness if she has the attention span for it). Your post made me think of this article I read in the past year on how teaching colorblindness, aka the absence of consciousness about racial differences actually makes children more likely to form problematic conclusions about race when they do encounter racial differences.
I couldn’t find the article I read, but a quick Google search yielded this Newsweek one, which may be based on the same study:
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/09/04/see-baby-discriminate.html
Racebending.com also has a great interview with the researcher who conducted the study, Professor Birgitte Vittrup Simpson of University of Texas-Austin.
http://www.racebending.com/v3/interviews/birgitte-vittrup-early-childhood-development-and-education-researcher/
The original dissertation can be found by Googling “Birgitte Vittrup university of Texas color blind” which gave me a link to a downloadable PDF that may or may not work when copied and pasted:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBUQFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Frepositories.lib.utexas.edu%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F2152%2F2930%2Fsimpsonb80466.pdf&ei=yI5hTLCHGoP68AbkyYiDCg&usg=AFQjCNEOVNA2nA9UsqQKzcKn1ch8PuUe9w
Info overload I know, but I like to cover my bases. My point (and this goes for anyone) of course is that, the next time you’re faced with choice of reinforcing colorblindness for the sake of innocence, or having a real discussion with a child about race, give some serious thought to choosing the discussion. Age appropriate of course, but real and in explicit terms rather than vague “we’re all different but equal” kind of talk. And that’s my two cents (er…more like a dollar but oh well)