Children and Colour Consciousness

1. Children and Colour Consciousness Researching Race: Issues and Implications

2. What do you see?

3. Categorization

4. Children and Discrimination • Klein et al. (2001) states that children are aware of differences amongst people from as early as age two. • Prejudice and stereotyping exists in preschoolers who exhibit such attitudes from as early as age three. • Australia Augoustinos& Roswarne, 2001; Black-Gutman & Hickson, 1996; MacNaughton & Davis, 2001a; Ramsey, 1991; Skatterbol, 2003), • (Europe (Lappalainen, 2004; Rhedding-Jones, 2001) • United States/Canada (Aboud, 2003; Aboud, & Doyle, 1996; Ausdale & Feagin, 1996; Williams & Morland, 1976). • Children understand the power associated with race and systematically use this in daily interactions when deciding friendships. • Acceptance/rejection as play partners • Another key finding reported in many studies was the overt rejection of the dark skinned people. • MacNaughton (2003;2005) Ramsey (1991), Lappalainen, 2004), Local: (Davie, 2003; Lee et al.,2002)

5. Learned Attitude • Brown (1998, p. 11) pinpoints that children “pick up misinformation, stereotypes, discriminatory attitudes and behaviours towards certain groups” from society. • Siraj-Blatchford (1992) further stresses that a young child’s self concept is created by the way other people treat him/her, emphasizing that peer relations are critical for a healthy self-concept.

6. Research Focus and Questions • The purpose of this study was to examine if race and ethnicity played a critical role in peer selection and socialization amongst Singaporean four to six year old preschool students. • In the course of examining race, the study also considered children’s understanding of prejudice, bias and use of stereotypical knowledge. • What criteria are used by four to six year old Singaporean preschool students in their selection of friends? • Do four to six year old children know their own racial identity? • Do four to six year old children choose friends based on racial characteristics?

7. Methods: Triangulation • Participant Observations • SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS • Persona Dolls • Coloured Photographs • SCENARIO BASED INQUIRY • Doll elicitation (see handout)

8. Analysis: Post structural Paradigm The poststructuralist paradigm advocates that meanings or knowledge about self, others and society in general is unfixed, simultaneously created by the subject’s social and material circumstances. Poststructuralism suggests the interplay of two forces - Power and Knowledge - which peg people into positions within the societal body.

9. Post structuralism • ‘Truth’ is not absolute and universal as there are many ‘truths’ tied to particular societies, and societies produce these truths to serve their myriad interests • Foucault argues that truth or knowledge cannot exist separately from power, as powerful people within societies create knowledge. • Other people are ‘subjectivized’ into certain roles, enabling the dominant in society to be in powerful positions, while the powerless keep productive through supervision and surveillance. • Foucault asserts that every society has a ‘regime of truth’ that is a particular type of discourse which it advocates and practices as true and, by this yardstick, members of that society are judged and put in place.

10. Decoding Post structuralism • Power in the Foucaultian sense is not the use of brute force, but a struggle to define what is ‘normal’. It seeks to highlight the plight of those who are forgotten when policies are drafted with “essentialist” underpinnings. • Concept of ‘Other’- Derrida/Foucault • Silence- as meaningful (Not the said but also what is not said)

11. Analysis: Content Analysis

12. Findings • Children are aware of “differences” between themselves and others, discerned through visually apparent physical features like skin colour, hair type and facial features. Crystal (6/C) explained how she identified the Caucasian doll. Mercy: What type of doll do you think she is? (Pointing to the white doll) Crystal: She’s a English doll Mercy: How do you know she is an English doll? Crystal: Because she’s got blond hair! Mercy: What else? Crystal: She’s got blue eyes!

13. These discernments influenced friendship choices amongst some children. Observation data: Christine (6/C) once overheard Adele(6/C) telling me that she was not included in the doctor-patient play session earlier. Christine informed her that the reason for her exclusion was “You’re so black,” to which Adele replied with a shout, “I’m not black...I’m brown because I swim.” For Adele, the association of her skin colour with the notion of “blackness” was anathema and she often identified herself as Chinese repeatedly to her classmates.

14. Findings Con’t • Results suggested that a colour bias takes root early amongst some children, including minority race youngsters. • Christopher (4/C) a friendly boy, who got along well with the others in his class, presented a very biased view of Indians. Actually, among all the four-year-olds observed in daily interaction, only Christopher (4/C) and Jenson (4/C) correlated dark skin colour with the rejection of members of a particular race. In one incident, Christopher refused to let me play with his building blocks saying, “You are black colour, brown colour… you smelly. I don’t want you sit here… you smelly”. • Biases against dark skinned children by the majority of the interviewed children indicate that prejudice and its sister, discrimination, begin as early as the preschool years in some youngsters.

15. Critical Findings • This study suggested that identity formation, especially ethnic or racial identity in young minority race children, might be thwarted by their desire to be part of the “norm” i.e. to be seen as part of the Chinese population even though they may be aware of their own non-Chinese racial membership. Penny (4/C), while looking at the photographs, pointed out that Maya resembled the dark Indian girl in the photo. Maya’s immediate reaction was to negate that observation. Maya: I look like this one… (pointing to the Chinese doll). Mercy: Do you think this doll (pointing to the Indian doll) and you look alike? Is this the same colour (comparing Maya’s skin colour and that of the doll’s)? Maya: (Shakes her head immediately and points to the Chinese doll). All minority race children interviewed in this study were aware of their race but when asked whom among the dolls and photos they most resembled, they would invariably pick the Chinese or Caucasian ones, suggesting a preference to be seen as part of the perceived popular racial groups within Singapore society

16. What about friends? • The 6 year olds were presented with the case scenario by the doll Rathi. The question is posed; “Can you all first tell me why do you think she cannot make any friends”? • This is the heart of the research study- what are the criteria children use when selecting friends? • This segment suggests that skin colour is a dominant reason for rejection in friendships.

17. Not as Pretty

18. She should be white too After a lengthy discussion on what strategies the doll Rathi can take in order to make friends, I ask once again, what else Rathi could do to make and keep friends? The next excerpt makes Leigh’s reasoning very explicit. In turn 22, she reaffirms that being white would have most certainly helped Rathi make and maintain friends.

19. Measures for Friends • In Kind- if you want more friends, bring more things! • Leigh commented: “She (Rathi) should bring bread, chocolate ice cream…brownies”. • This approach to friendship making was also suggested by the four and five year-olds. Lian (5/C) and Farah (5/M) determined that Rathi needed to bring to class party hats, sweets, chocolate candies, ice-cream and lollipops during her birthday, and Maya (4/I) said that Rathi could not make friends because “she never bring sweets and never bring toys to school”.

20. Implications • Teacher’s Role in diversity and multicultural education • The need for teacher awareness of own prejudices • The need to overcome these initial over generalizations • Training to handle sensitive and painful experiences that children come with. • The making and use of a customized multicultural curriculum with our young children. • Schools as places where authentic relationships can be forged • Schools must provide the physical space and the psychological space for children to be able to cross the chasm and forge friendships across the colour markers. • The environment in the class must be safe and open for discussion that enables children to see similarities more than differences. • Create space and opportunities for children to not merely ‘tolerate’ differences but to ‘appreciate’ differences. • Make connections on a deep and sustained ‘human’ level rather than at a ‘ethnicity’ level.

21. Classroom practices • Resources: Use material that is representative of the children in your school • Make children experience their realities in a positive way: make connections between academic learning/cultural learning to the diversity outside their language classrooms. • Seek to make interdisciplinary connections that span across the different cultural traditions rather than being insular and looking deeply and solely at your own cultural resources. • Children need to be grounded in their own history and knowledge of their cultural traditions is important. • But they must also learn to value other people while being confident and appreciative of their people’s collective achievements.

22. Please feel free to share your experiences . Pose questions for us to further explore how our children can be best helped. Diversity in your classrooms