Just like me… from Anti-Racist Parent

This photo from the White House Flickr account shows a young boy rubbing President Barack Obama’s head. Reportedly, “The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own.”

I don’t know if I could possibly love this picture more.  Not just the obvious of what it means to children to be able to see people who look like them in the media, their government, etc… this doesn’t look like a staged photo op for the media’s benefit. It’s very personal, very touching, and speaks so loudly for the sensitivity and generosity of spirit of President Obama. 

 

 

via Just like me… at Anti-Racist Parent – for parents committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook.

Cyndi’s First Racial Experiences

Part 3 of 3

I am reading this book, voraciously… and the way this chapter is laid out I didn’t really pause to fully answer what my first experience with race was, before I was too far into the page to really answer it without the light Tim Wise shed on the subject.

For background, I don’t have any conscious memory of the first time I saw a black person, or hispanic, asian, pacific islander, etc.  My mother was in the military, as was her second husband, who adopted me, and we often lived in military housing, or in communities near the base.  I remember either my immediate neighborhood or the school I attended as always being racially and ethnically diverse; but then I wondered if it wasn’t all that diverse, if it just seemed diverse compared to Herington, where there was (briefly, I’d say only one grade level) one black student in my class from 5th thru 11th grades.  I went digging through some old photo albums to see if my early childhood was really as diverse as I thought it was.  Of course I found some baby pictures of me with my Italian-Mexican-American cousins, but I was looking for some evidence of diversity in my community… this is the oldest/first picture of me with a playmate.  No smart ass comments about me having been born a blonde, please.

Tim Wise & First Racial Experiences

Part 2 of 3

Most whites havent given it much though, which is not surprising. Truthfully, why would we? Race, after all, is a subject that, for the most part, we rarely have to engage directly in our lives.

But what has always bothered me more; more than the blank stares that often manifest on the faces of whites asked the question, is the self assured response of those whites who actually think they know the answer, who have given it some thought, and then proceed to talk about the first time the encountered a person of color and noticed the difference or had it pointed out to them, or saw some overt form of mistreatment meted out against a black person Latino, Asian, or whomever.