Boxes
Daniel likes order. Have I said that before? Sometimes that’s fine, even helpful. While waiting on line at the pharmacy, he tidies up the candy display (this goes there, this goes there). But sometimes, his quest for order takes us into dangerous waters.
He, I think (I hope) in common with other five and six year olds, is a bit categorical about gender roles as part of forming his own gender identity. That is a girl color. That is for boys. Boys don’t wear that. Girls have this hair. Whatever. We challenge him when he says these things and otherwise hope that our feminist household straightens him out before he gets to college or that his first girlfriend kicks his arse into shape for us. I believe that this sort of stuff is about definition and even more so, about self-definition. Our society is too essentially binary to escape our children seeeking to define themselves in opposition.
What feels more threatening is when he talks about “people with dark skin.” His observations and labels are milder and less constructed than his male/female stuff. Instead of “men can’t be nurses” (which is more clearly a reflection of classic gender divisions) he will say almost nonsensical things like “People with dark skin eat with spoons.” It drives Ed absolutely crazy and I am not far behind. Partially this is basic, unadmirable fear that people will think our child is echoing us and decide that we’re some sort of racist morons. There’s also a fear that he will spout some of this stuff on the street and get himself into trouble. It’s also just too horrible to contemplate, that a child of ours is, even innocently, talking race.
I suspect that we more comfortably field the sexist stuff because our city is less ill from it, our country less infected. Race in the United States is a twisted, convoluted issue onto which all sorts of things are mapped, class and gender included. And it is murky. Messy. Hard to discuss in polite or impolite company. Feminism (for good or ill) can more easily be discussed, sexist jokes slapped down, sexist assumptions challenged. Race? How easy is it to talk about race in the U.S.? After Katrina? In Philadelphia? The racism in our country is so evil, so destructive, so prevalent.
But as for Daniel, the challenge is remembering that all this is just his way of trying to sort out the universe, which is what he’s been trying to do all his life. Boxes, neat labels, places to sort people, would help him. He would feel better if there were order. And there is not. And so we have to gently knock down the boxes he’s trying to make lest they wall him in, as well as the people around him. It’s scary, for him and for us. And it’s scary too, how it scrapes the edges of our own unseen boxes, our own purposely ignored orderings of the world. Raising children is like raising yourself all over again.
I was having a conversation with two black friends at my old job. Both had children. One time, a school teacher was talking about how black slaves were the workers on plantations. My friend’s child shrugged at this, and the teacher said something like, “Doesn’t that matter to you?” and the child said, “No. I’m not black.” And the teacher said, “You aren’t black?” and the child said, “Uh-huh. I’m like cocoa, my mom is like chocolate, and my dad is like brown sugar. But none of us are black.”
When the child came home and told his mom about all this, she had to sit him down and explain that he is ‘black’, just as she is, just as her momma is.
“But Grandma had a light mom!” which was code for a white mom.
“Doesn’t matter. She’s still black.”
Children have this wonderful naivity about race. I was so sad that no one had to have this discussion with me, yet this darling child had to be thrown into the middle of the White/Black world without a choice.
Perhaps, Daniel is merely beginning to understand that people come in different colors. And if he is not regularly exposed to ‘blacks’ or ‘hispanics’ or ‘asians’, he may not understand. Please don’t take THAT the wrong way: unfortunately, our cities divide us in these neat little subsections where we don’t get much interfacing with one another; and if I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth, I will have it removed, depending on how far it’s wedged in there.
Thank you for this. thank you for raising your children in a spirit of love, and of acceptance, and of breaking down walls before they have sat too long in old mortar, and have formed a great barrier.
i wish i knew what
to say, how to word things,
how to get my ideas across
without fearing that i am
saying it wrong.
all i can say is that
all you can be is aware,
and alert, and mindful…
which it definately sounds
like you are…
life is confusing,
especially for children…
it takes time and mistakes
to make sense of it.
good luck.
have you looked up Asperger’s?
Oh my sainted aunt, Anonymous. What would I do if not for the intervention of perfect strangers who don’t leave a name? Let’s assume that I have looked up absolutely everything concerning my slightly odd child from Aspergers to NVLD to PDD-NOS to more profound autism to Sensory Integration to depression to bipolar and on and on down the list.
Basic conclusion, some of us are just weird and there ain’t no label for that.
If our children did not notice differences in skin color they would be morons. Race is such a raw issue. For children among children noticing someone’s skin color is no different than noting eye color. It is only when adults get involved that simple observance becomes more.
my son asked the other day (I don’t even know what prompted his question) are black people supposed to be separated? I just said no… and he did not elaborate. you are so right. raising children is like raising myself all over again. your stories are helpful to read. i can’t even begin to tell you what has come up in our family because our son is investigating his body. he is seven. there are questions. it is his job to ask them and mine to not get all reactive and weird.
on another note… my son had a friend over the other day who was shocked (at seven) to see that Noah has dolls. Shook his little universe, it did!
Brilliant post.
We’ve not yet had the race one come up (see below), but GOSH do we have to deal with gender stuff! (I have a boy who knits, spins, wears a girl’s school uniform as his kilt, loves pink, and plays with dolls–but he is STILL incredibly rigid about a lot of gender stuff!)
On top of the binary rigidity of children, so many seem to have no restraint about saying things that we as adults would not say. Perhaps this is because they take some things as so matter-of-fact? I almost melted into the floor when Son at age 5 watched an extremely obese man get into our bus. Rather than looking down as all the adults did, Son said excitely and really loudly, “That man is HUGE!” (Luckily, the man smiled at him, sat down next to him, and struck up a friendly conversation.)
Son is still totally unable to figure out race. We just had a huge fight because I refused to answer his question of whether we are white or black. (Incidentally, he does know quite a bit about African American history and culture. Although he does not understand the link between “black” and “Af Am” identity. Incidentally, our friends and neighbors and family are of a wide spectrum of cultures and colors.)
It totally makes sense to me that when children start to understand how the rhetoric of race in this country goes, they try really hard to try to make sense of it.
So I guess I disagree with one part of Kim’s comment: children don’t have to be morons to “not see” differences in color. Color is a huge spectrum and when they have not heard the rhetoric yet, they might not naturally “see” those differences at all. (For example, we see lots of shades of blue and can tell them apart but fundamentally do not categorize them differently.) Seems like Fritz’s comments sort of fit with this.
Ah, and as I read through these comments I yet again wonder what I might have been diagnosed with when I was a child….
I heard on the news just the other day (but can remember no identifying details!) that a study had been done of primary school age children (8 -10)about their awareness of different races, faiths etc. The study (to the best of my poor recollection)found that children were far more likely to see differences in terms of interests, hair colour and gender than any of the things the study was exploring!
Wow! I so have no wise words … I wonder how our daughter will see her Asian relatives vs her non-Asian ones. Will she notice that her father looks different than other fathers?!?! Or will there be blind acceptance.
Ok, sometimes I read a post that I love, but am left speechless. Of course, this is one of them. Just wanted you to know.
Also, love your response to Anonymous.
Dear Purloined Letter-I hope that I did not offend you-I probably should not have chosen the word moron. I just meant (and expressed very badly) that children see the differences, but do not make judgments or friendships based on them. They also notice the many shades between black and white.
Kim–
You definitely did not offend me! I’m sorry if my note made you think it might have. I totally agree with your larger point and should have said so directly. Just wanted to add my perspective to it, that kids see differences between people (as you were trying to say) but may not always be able to divide them into the categories we do, even if they have not yet absorbed the judgments.
Very kind of you to apologize, even though it was totally unnecessary.
OH stunt mother, keep writing, keep nurturing your fantastic son, its great to notice what people eat with, its good just to notice…everything.
I ADORE your view on your world, could read you for hours.
Just a simple Thank-you
I am not really anonymous, its Muddy Red Shoes, Im just having trouble getting blogger to take my comments, maybe its something to do with eating my supper with a spoon:)