September 14, 2012
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They start young…
One of my closest friends at college works at a community after school program watching kids. A couple days ago, he posted this status on Facebook:
Heard the saddest thing at work today, just about broke my heart: A 1st grade Chinese girl was told by another 1st grade girl that she “cant play with our group of friends because you’re Japanese.” That racism starts so young. :/
To be honest, I was totally dumb founded for a minute… I went on to explain to her: “what if people didnt let you play with them because you have red hair?” She told me: “No, everyone loves me” and then ran off. Ill be speaking with her mother tomorrow. I was so damn flabbergasted that she said that.
To me, the saddest thing about this all is that whether or not this little girl knew that she was engaging in such unnecessary and hurtful racism, the innocent Chinese girl will have this memory with her for life, carrying with her the scars of this rejection based on her race/ethnicity making her not “good enough” for the other girls to play with her.Lacking the adequate facilities for moral reasoning at such a young age, it it is difficult to lay the heavy blame of the consequences of such comments on a little girl as much as, say, a 40 year old man. I feel there may be a deceptive air of levity and impermanence to the kids’ judgments of each other at play, disguising the fact that even a 10 second soundbite or 1 minute long memory of such hurtful comments can be so easily bottled up and built into self-esteem limiting hurdles that will have to be debunked and torn down later in life anyway.
I really hope both of these girls someday grow to become mature young ladies who know how to treat themselves and each other with respect.
-b.
Comments (4)
Kids are very cruel. Appealing to their reason doesn’t work at a young age.
I watched a documentary a year (maybe two years) ago that showed schools in China and how children already at the age of 4 or 5 hate the Japanese people. One example that I recall was when the children were asked about a sports competition and who did they most want to beat/who did they want to lose? If my memory is correct, every single child answered: “Japan.” Several of the responses followed were about how much they dislike the Japanese people.
If I can find the documentary later this evening, I’ll send a link about it.
Parents have forgotten how to parent apparently.
@beowulf222 - It sucks how little awareness children have regarding the hurt they can cause without even trying. I know I was often a little jerk as a kid… not that I understood that at the time.
@boxedwine - Part of the in China may be the nationalistic brainwashing… Also if I recall correctly, there’s a lot of animosity toward the Japanese in particular that gets passed down by older Chinese folks who might’ve been around for horrors such as the Nanking Massacre. I find it rather sad but not completely unfathomable.
@x3style - We just hope the kids grow up and find some perspective accordingly… T_T