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I tell my son be nice and friendly to everybody and never call somebody a bad name. I have told him that people just look different but they are all the same. I have never heard him question other races.
My best explanation for him is that certain people are not as fortunate as he is. I tell that people will judge you based on skin color too but it is best that you don't say or tell other people about their color but only point out their names.
In public my wife and I tries to educate our kids what nationality of the kids or people they see or play with just so they know.
The toughest part is how to explain what "racism" is about. I think my kids have experienced racism indirectly I just tell them to do their best to respect others and then they would respect you.
This could be the problem. Why point out other ethnicities? He doesn't need to know this. That's why he is quick to associate behavior with "color." Your first correction is to explain that color does not equal ethnicity or culture. He will then stop assuming that kids who look similar are of the same ethnic group and culture.
Your second lesson is to start introducing tolerance to him by educating him on the various mistreatment different people have experienced, based upon their ethnicity, religious beliefs, or gender. Third, simply tell him his comments are inaccurate because he only knows the kids in his class, at his school, and that there are many other children who don't act like his classmates.
I'd go further and ask him what his teacher says to these students? Is it the same group of kids? You can then point out that people are individuals and should be judged accordingly.
As far as children not seeing color, of course they see differences in people, they just don't usually assign anything to it...that is a learned behavior. Whether inside the home or out. BUT, definitely nip this in the bud!
My Vietnamese daughter told me she is tired of other kids telling her she is smart in school because she is Asian and "all Asians are smart". I tried to explain to her that many Asian families as a culture put an emphasis on doing well in school so that when they excell it is easy to extrapolate that "All Asians are smart".
Ha ha ha haha.........reminds me of when I was that age..........the consensus was that........get ready.....
Kids also pick up racism from the teachers and schools.
One day my 8 year old came home saying he felt real sorry for black people. I asked him why and he said because they're so poor and have such hard lives. That's very strange because in this city, blacks are the most middle class of anyone and there's no ghetto or sharecropper type areas. He got it from school so I told him that I work with black people who have it better than we do and that he doesn't have to feel sorry for them.
Then one day he came home and said we needed to go shopping because it was some kind of Mexican holiday and the class was supposed to dress like Mexicans and I reminded him that most of his class is Mexicans and don't they just dress like he does everyday?
Best way for a kid to see that bad -- or good -- behavior is not racially or ethnically determined is for the kids to have significnat exposure to other ethnic groups outside of school. Do the parents have any friends or acquaintances of other ethnicities who the kid would see at a visit, a social gathering, a church, or somewhere else? Does the child participate in any mixed group activities outside of school such as a singing or drama group maybe, a dance group, a charitable or civic activity, sports (it might be good to try this just for this experience, even though your kid isn't intot them) or something else that happens outside of school? When kids see the "other" in different settings, but especially at home or with parents somehow, it makes it far easier for the to disregard whatever nonsense they see or hear at shchool and not come up with the stereotypcial groupthink about how "those people" are always bad.
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