RACE AND LIFE ONE TO ONE
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JANUARY 5, 2018


THERE IS A GREAT NEED TO SEPARATE CULTURE FROM INDOCTRINATION CONSCIOUSLY. CULTURE IS THE GLUE THAT HOLDS US TOGETHER, BUT TOO MUCH “PEER PRESSURE” OR AUTHORITARIANISM DRIVES US APART INSTEAD, AND IS SIMPLY NOT “AMERICAN.” AMERICANS ARE SUPPOSED TO THINK INDIVIDUALLY AND VOTE ACCORDINGLY. I’M LIKE BERNIE SANDERS. I’M AN INDEPENDENT, BOTH PHILOSOPHICALLY AND FACTUALLY. WHEN THE PARTY DUMPED ON BERNIE, I VOTED ONE MORE TIME FOR HILLARY TO TRY TO KEEP TRUMP FROM WINNING AND THEN CHANGED MY VOTER REGISTRATION. EVERY TIME THEY CALL ME FOR A DONATION, I SAY NO CAN DO. WE NEED TO USE OUR INDIVIDUAL MINDS TO PRODUCE A MORE CONSCIOUS GROUP UNITY BASED ON BETTER IDEALS, WHICH IS NOT MANDATORY, IS NOT PERMANENT, AND CANNOT BE BULLDOZED MENTALLY AS EASILY AS IS THE CASE NOW. SEE THE INTERESTING ARTICLES ON BLACK/WHITE/HISPANIC RELATIONS, AND ON ACCULTURATION IN GENERAL.

IT IS CLEAR TO ME THAT WE NEED TO APPROACH MUCH MORE CLOSELY TO A STATE OF INTEGRATION NATIONWIDE BY RACE, RELIGION AND CULTURAL GROUP IN A SPIRIT OF GOODWILL; IF WE ARE TO APPROACH PEACE AND COMMON RESPECT IN THE USA, GIVEN THE INTENSITY AND LONG HISTORY OF RACIAL HATRED HERE, IT WILL TAKE CONSCIOUS EFFORT AND, IN MY OPINION, GOVERNMENT PLANNING. WHITE PRIVILEGE MUST BE ADDRESSED AND DISSOLVED IN THE LAW AND THE MARKETPLACE. MOST OF THAT WORK WILL HAVE TO BE ON THE PART OF INDIVIDUALS, BUT I HOPE FOR A GOVERNMENTAL ROLE IN PRECIPITATING MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING, RESPECT AND TRUST. THE LAW IN ALL TOO MANY INSTANCES BACKS UP THE WHITE SUPREMACIST APPROACH, AND THAT NEEDS TO STOP. A VERY LARGE REASON FOR THAT IS THE PUSH IN THAT DIRECTION BY THE BILLIONAIRES CLUB. THAT MEANS, FIRST, THAT WE HAVE TO BE WILLING TO DO THAT, AND SECOND, CONSCIOUSLY TAKE STEPS AS INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS TO PURSUE THE BETTER GOALS.

I DON’T SEE A GROUP MOVEMENT YET TO BRING THAT ABOUT, UNTIL A LARGE ENOUGH CORE OF OUR POPULATION WHO DO WANT TO ACHIEVE RACIAL/ETHNIC FAIRNESS AND DECENCY BEGINS TO COALESCE, BUT I THINK IT MAY BE COMING SOON. I BELIEVE THERE IS A GREATER CONSCIOUSNESS RIGHT NOW OF THE NEED TO WALK UP TO THE INVISIBLE DIVIDING LINE AND START TO INTERACT IN RESPECT AND OPENNESS, DESPITE OUR DIFFERENCES. DIFFERENCES DON’T NEED TO EMERGE AS HATRED. I HOPE AND DESIRE TO ADD MY WORDS TO FURTHERING THAT IDEAL EVENTUALITY. I HAVE FOUND SEVERAL ARTICLES ON THIS ISSUE THAT I THINK ARE PERSUASIVE AND INFORMATIVE.

THE UNFAIRNESS IN OUR CULTURE IS EVEN MORE UNACCEPTABLE WHEN IT IS BUILT INTO THE LEGAL SYSTEM IN DOZENS AND DOZENS OF WAYS AS IT IS IN THE USA TODAY. WE NEVER, AS A SOCIETY, GOT TO A POINT OF HONESTY ABOUT THE WHOLE ISSUE OF SLAVERY AND WHITE PRIVILEGE, PLUS TO A LESSER, BUT STILL SERIOUS DEGREE, THE GENERAL HOSTILITY TOWARD ALL IMMIGRANTS AMONG SOME SEGMENTS OF OUR POPULATION. AS A RESULT OF THAT, WHEN I TRY TO MAKE A HUMAN LEVEL CONTACT WITH A PERSON OF ANOTHER RACE, THERE IS OFTEN A PUSHBACK OF DISTRUST. I UNDERSTAND THAT, GIVEN THE HISTORY, BUT I DON’T LIKE IT, AND THE SITUATION DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. I WANT TO SEE US TRY TO PUT OUR MULTIFARIOUS RELIGIONS TO WORK IN PRODUCING A COMFORTABLE AND ENERGETIC “MELTING POT,” SUCH AS I WAS LED TO BELIEVE IN AS A CHILD. AMERICA IS NOT NEARLY AS BEAUTIFUL TO ME WITHOUT THAT.

GO TO THE CCSU.EDU WEBSITE BELOW TO READ ABOUT ACCULTURATION PROBLEMS. WHAT WE BLACKS AND WHITES HAVE IS AN ACCULTURATION PROBLEM ON STEROIDS. THE ARTICLE IS A PDF, SO IT WILL NOT COPY TO MY WORD FILE. IT IS A SHORT HOW-TO ON WORKING ON THESE ISSUES, WHICH LOOKS HELPFUL TO ME. I HAVE PERSONALLY BEEN AN INTROVERT ALL MY LIFE, SO I DO NOT SEEK A GROUP TO JOIN, BUT RATHER I MAKE A DEEPER LEVEL OF RELATIONSHIP – THOUGH WITH FEWER INDIVIDUALS, ALL OF WHOM ARE RESPECTFUL OF MY INDIVIDUALITY AND FEELINGS AND THOSE OF OTHERS. THAT DOESN’T MEAN WE NEVER ARGUE, BUT THAT THE RELATIONSHIP IS ALMOST FREE OF HATEFUL LITTLE PERSONAL JABS IN THE MIDDLE OF WHAT HAD SEEMED TO BE A HAPPY CONVERSATION. WITH THOSE PEOPLE I HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WHICH I DEFINE AS “FRIENDSHIP,” WHICH IS VERY WARM AND CLOSE. IT IS GENUINELY LOVE, ACTUALLY.

FOR GROUPS THAT I DO WANT TO JOIN, I ENJOY BELONGING TO A CLOSER AND NON-COMPETITIVE SORT, FOR INSTANCE A CHURCH GROUP LIKE MY SMALL UNITARIAN SOCIETY, WHICH IS MADE UP MAINLY OF PEOPLE LIKE ME – QUESTIONING, PROBING ISSUES, ACCEPTING INDIVIDUALS, AND PURSUING SOCIETAL FAIRNESS AND EMPATHY. I TRIED ANOTHER ONE WHEN I FIRST CAME TO THE CITY, BUT THEY WERE WEALTHY AND RATHER CONCEITED, I THOUGHT; SO, I WENT TO THE YELLOW PAGES AND FOUND ANOTHER WHO WERE SMALLER AND GENERALLY LESS WELL-TO-DO, WHERE I HAVE FOUND A FRIENDLY HOME. I AM VERY UNHAPPY WHEN A SOCIETAL FRAMEWORK, WHETHER FORMAL OR INFORMAL, PREVENTS ME FROM MAKING A FRIENDSHIP OR EVEN A LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER PERSON OF MY CHOICE BASED ON THEIR RACE, SOCIAL STATUS OR ETHNICITY, FOR INSTANCE. I DON’T WANT PEOPLE WHO WILL BE COMPANIONS TO TRY TO DOMINATE ME.

I MAINTAIN NO CLOSE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WHICH ARE NOT OF THAT NATURE AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE. THAT’S PARTLY BY INSTINCT AND PARTLY BY CAREFUL CHOICE. I MADE A DECISION A FEW YEARS AGO THAT I WANT THE REST OF MY LIFE TO BE AS HAPPY AS POSSIBLE, AND TRYING CONTINUALLY TO PLEASE SOMEONE WHO IS POMPOUS, DISRESPECTFUL, JUDGMENTAL, AND OTHERWISE UNFAIR TO ME OR TO ANYONE ELSE, JUST DOESN’T BRING HAPPINESS. I FIND THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE BULLYING TO ONE WILL TRY IT WITH EVERYONE.

THAT SORT OF THING IS A LARGE PART OF THE CULTURAL DIVIDE THAT I FIND AT THIS TIME IN THE USA. IT ISN’T NEW, BUT IT HAS GROWN MORE EXTREME DURING MY LIFETIME, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA GAVE BLACK PEOPLE THEIR FULL HUMAN RIGHTS. I WANT THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN THE USA TO NUDGE THE LIBERAL VIEWPOINT A LITTLE MORE TO THE LEFT AND PRODUCE SOME MORE AMBITIOUS RESULTS, HOPEFULLY WITHIN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, BUT INDEPENDENTLY IF NECESSARY, BRINGING CHANGE THAT DELVES MUCH MORE DEEPLY THAN JUST THE ECONOMIC ISSUES.

THE TRUMP ELECTION SHOCKED ME AS IT DID SO MANY, BUT THE HANDWRITING WAS ON THE WALL. I COULD SEE THE KIND OF ROUGH CROWD HE WAS EXCITING TO A FEVER PITCH. I WASN’T PREPARED FOR THE NAZI SALUTES. I JUST DIDN’T KNOW HOW MANY GOOD WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE WOULD VOTE TO ROLL BACK THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT OF PROGRESS THAT WE’VE HAD IN MY LIFETIME, AND IT SICKENS ME.

ON BETTER ACCULTURATION IN THE US, AND THEREFORE MORE PEACE, SEE THIS PDF.

http://www.ccsu.edu/ddesignation/files/acculturation_strategies_worksheet.pdf



THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THESE ARTICLES, IT SEEMS TO ME. REARING OUR KIDS IS CRUCIAL FOR A CIVILIZED SOCIETY, WHICH I HOPE WE WILL SOMEDAY BE. IF WE CAN GET EVERYBODY EDUCATED UP TO SPEED, BY WHICH I MEAN AT LEAST A TWO YEAR OR FOUR YEAR DEGREE THAT WILL BOTH MAKE IT EASIER FOR THEM TO GET A JOB AND “ENLIGHTEN” THEIR MINDS AND SPIRITS. WHITE PARENTS NEED TO HAVE MORE FAMILY DISCUSSIONS ON ISSUES LIKE POSITIVE RACE, EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CLASS RELATIONSHIPS. WE MUST REMEMBER, TOO, THAT IT ISN’T JUST A LECTURE COURSE. IT HAS A LAB CLASS WITH IT ALSO. SO, BOTH BLACK, WHITE, HISPANIC, ISLAMIC, RUSSIAN PARENTS, ETC. ETC. NEED TO STRESS LEARNING TO PLAY NICE TOGETHER AND WORK HARD ENOUGH TO LEARN SOMETHING WHILE THEY ARE IN SCHOOL. BECAUSE IF BLACK, WHITE AND THE WHOLE RAINBOW OF RACES, RELIGIONS, OPINIONS, ETC. CAN MAKE THE TRANSITION INTO ADULTHOOD EASIER, LIFE IN THE USA WILL BE BETTER FOR ALL. MUCH OF THAT SHOCKING VIOLENCE WOULD GO AWAY AS WELL.

IT IS UNFORTUNATE, BUT LITTLE CHILDREN WILL BEGIN TO HAVE RACIAL SEPARATION IDEAS JUST BECAUSE THERE IS A VISIBLE DIFFERENCE. THEY MAY HAVE TO BE GUIDED IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. THAT MEANS THAT PARENTS HAVE TO CARE AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON. LATER, OF COURSE, KIDS BECOME MORE AWARE AS WELL THAT NOT CONFORMING TO A NORM EVEN IF IT IS EVIL, WILL BRING SOME LEVEL OF SOCIAL PUNISHMENT SUCH AS ISOLATION OR MUCH WORSE. THEY HAVE TO BE TAUGHT BY THEIR PARENTS TO BE CARING ENOUGH AND – I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH -- STRONG ENOUGH TO STAND UP FOR WHAT IS GOOD. GOING WITH WHAT IS EVIL IS ALWAYS EASIER.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/time-for-white-parents-of-white-kids-to-bring-the-resistance_us_5910a2f3e4b056aa2363d794
It’s Time For White Parents Of White Kids To Bring The Resistance Home
Conversations about race have to start much earlier than most white people think they do.
05/08/2017 09:30 pm ET Updated May 24, 2017

Photograph – A child whose Teeshirt says on the back, “Imagine Equality.”

Recently, I joined more than 1,000 people in Park Slope, Brooklyn at a community meeting convened to resist Trump’s agenda. One of the speakers was Hebh Jamal, a 17-year-old Muslim student who led a citywide student walkout to protest the travel ban and Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

She’s also a leader in the movement to desegregate New York City schools, among the most segregated in the country.

She looked out at the nearly all-white, upper-income crowd—which included many parents—and asked us to recognize ourselves and our children as beneficiaries of a rigged educational system. While this is a known and somewhat lamented fact in our liberal community, the silent room got a little more silent as we contemplated ourselves as both new resisters and longtime collaborators.

We’re now past the 100-day mark of an administration infused with the spirit of white nationalism. I feel myself to be living a split-level life: upstairs, in the public realm, I continue to call my representatives and go with my family to protests; downstairs, on the subterranean level, I’m wading through the muck of my own whiteness.

This is not a place I want to be.

What do you like about being white?

This was the question posed to me and other participants of a workshop I attended a month after the election, which was called Undoing Racism. Although I’ve been engaged in social justice work my entire adult life, it wasn’t until the Black Lives Matter movement that I started to fully reckon with myself as a white parent of a white child. In our household, I’ve spoken with a whole lot of concern about racism—but not with much urgency.

And during my nearly 16 years of parenthood, I’ve rarely spoken with other white parents about what it means to be raising the next generation of white people.

In the workshop, we sat in a tight circle for two days. The trainers were as diverse as the room, some of them middle-aged or older. Trump, to my surprise, didn’t command their attention. They talked about race in this country with a fierce kind of equanimity; a degree of remove from the present moment. As people began to describe what it’s like to move through their lives as black, Latina, Chinese-American, or white, I also felt myself detach from the headlines and begin to quiet down. I understood why the emotional temperature of the room was so carefully, expertly regulated. Silence was respected and humor welcomed, though this was not group therapy. It was a process of collective witnessing, of watching each other begin to tell the truth.

I’m wading through the muck of my own whiteness.
What do you like about being white?

I was expecting, at this training, to wholeheartedly acknowledge my white privilege. I’ve been very good at this for years.

But I wasn’t expecting to hear myself say, I like that I can use the bathroom wherever I am. I like that I can walk into any building I want to. I like that as a white woman I’m never perceived as a threat and that I’ve been smiled at my whole life.

This, I’ve come to know, is most usefully experienced not as a confession of sin, but as an acknowledgment of fact. I’ve been learning to depersonalize my racism in order to take responsibility for it. To locate it in the institutions that have shaped me. To understand white superiority as an inherited condition, a mindset not of my choosing but that I have been socialized to carry and to transmit. It feels less a source of personal shame, than a thing that I can hear and see and smell. I think of my whiteness as a still active construction site, which was set up the day I was born.

As it was for my child.

Playgrounds. Just before the election, a friend of mine who is raising an African American boy told me of her overwhelming pain when watching him attempt to play in a Minneapolis playground and be shunned by the white children whom he’d approached. This was not the first time she’d seen her child, the only child of color in a play group, excluded in this way—an exclusion that was not noticed or challenged by the attendant white parents.

“My son already doesn’t like his skin color. He’s five.”

We’d never talked about this.

My friend is a white woman married to an African American woman and they have had many discussions about race with their child.

When she told me about her son’s experience on the playground, I wanted to imagine that I would have been the “good” white parent, the one who would have recognized what was happening and stepped up in some way. But I very much doubt it. I would likely have told myself I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing, so that I wouldn’t have to figure out what to do about it.

I’ve been learning to depersonalize my racism in order to take responsibility for it. I think of my whiteness as a still active construction site...
When my child was five, we weren’t yet discussing race head on. My husband wanted to start the conversation, but I wanted to do more research. I wasn’t sure what the right time was. I wanted to do it the right way. Looking back, though, I see as much complacency as anxiety. I never did the research I planned to do. As part of a family embedded in a progressive community, I gave myself a pass. I seemed to believe that the necessary conversations about race and racism would be transmitted to my kid by osmosis.

Another friend, a parent and teacher who is African American, wondered if my anecdote about this five-year-old boy’s experience on the playground would be truly understood by white readers of this essay. Would they feel its full impact? For her, this story immediately brought to mind the story of six-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., whose white friends were one day told by their mother that they could no longer play with him.

She noted that 82 years later, “what is at stake for us in a Trump America, is what has been at stake for us always.”

While I’ve wanted to believe that we’ve traveled a great distance from that overtly racist white mother of the 1930s, it’s now clearer to me than ever that that distance can only be measured by the actual experiences of children on today’s playgrounds—not by a playground’s “diversity” and not by our intentions as white parents.


MATTHEW HORWOOD VIA GETTY IMAGES
Conversations about race have to start much earlier than most white people think they do—and we have to keep the conversations going.

We have to identify all the ways that the benefit of the doubt accrues to white teens as they walk down the street, play around, act out—or walk into school.

Benefit of the doubt: When my white 15-year-old brought a knife into school to cut apples to demonstrate a Jewish holiday ritual, the knife was confiscated by security guards, but they* were waved into class.

Absence of benefit of the doubt: When a student of color walked into the same building with a pin holding his broken eyeglasses together, the guards took his glasses and confiscated the pin. When the student tried to retrieve his glasses, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.

We have to have conversations about race in the moment, when our kids come home from school or parties or the mall, when they’re taking off their coats, when we don’t think we have the right words, when they don’t want to talk to us about anything, but when real life is happening.

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I like that as a white woman I’m never perceived as a threat and that I’ve been smiled at my whole life.

I’ve talked with my kid about the fact that it was my idea to send the knife to school—and that I strongly doubt that a mother of a child of color would ever pack a knife in her child’s backpack.

And I continue to think about all of the ways that I will never worry, the way that parents of children of color worry, about the infinite number of ways the world might threaten their children’s sense of self-worth, aspirations, and physical safety. I try to imagine what I can’t: the goodbyes at the door, the trips on the bus, the subway, the highway. Visits to toy stores and grocery stores, meetings with teachers and principals. The encounters with neighbors, librarians, nurses and doctors. The messages from textbooks, the media, Hollywood, the publishing industry. The scrutiny by taxi drivers, judges and juries, prospective employers and landlords. The self-scrutiny that can lead to suicide. The stops by police officers patrolling on foot or in cars, in cities and suburbs.

The weapons drawn.

Just over a week ago, a white police officer in a Dallas suburb fired his AR-15 rifle into a car with five black teenagers. They had just left a party. An unarmed 15-year-old, Jordan Edwards, was fatally shot in the head.

The ADL reports that white supremacists have dramatically scaled up college recruiting efforts in more than 33 states, resulting, since January, in a surge of racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic propaganda. As a Jew, I feel newfound anxiety. As a Jew who is also white, I feel the imperative to join with other parents to help our children see the daily privilege of their whiteness; see the illusion of superiority it conveys; understand how their racism is being constructed; and take action to combat the system that took the life of Jordan Edwards.

“White parents of white kids need to start talking to each other,” said my friend, the mother of the five-year-old boy. “And it’ll all be imperfect, really hard and messy.”

Living rooms. I’ve found it exhausting to perform my parenting for other parents. I’ve spent years pretending not to be confused or hypocritical or complicit in perpetuating in my family or the world the many things I decry: materialism, competitiveness, narcissism, racism. But I’ve also been lucky enough to learn what can happen when the opposite is true—when I can stop pretending for a few hours at a time.

When my child was three months old, we hired a part-time nanny, a woman who was born in Jamaica and is the mother of three boys. Debbie had been a childcare provider for a decade before she worked for us. I had no idea how to hire someone to care for my child. And I was deeply uncomfortable with how it all “looked,” but I squirmed silently. Many white families in my neighborhood hire nannies who are immigrant women of color. It’s a community norm to hire a nanny and a community norm never to talk about race.

Understand that as white people, we’ve been incentivized to do nothing difficult...
Debbie came into our home with much good will, patience, and experience—but I felt nervous and confused about how to be an employer. So did other parents in my community, and we finally got together in someone’s living room to talk about it.

It was a relief—and a profound challenge—to tease apart all of the threads of race, class, gender, and immigration status that run through the domestic workplace.

Ultimately, those living room meetings got real—we talked about our ambivalence about leaving our kids, our inherited attitudes about “the help” and “women’s work”—and we got somewhere. We partnered with domestic worker activists and, after a lot of fits and starts, helped found a national organization—Hand in Hand—to support domestic employers like us, people who wanted to be fair employers but had no idea what that looked like.

I’m now a true believer in the living-room-approach to starting conversations that feel overwhelming and exposing.

We have to clean our bathrooms, set out some food, and invite over our white friends to keep writing letters to Congress and also to talk—with as little judgment and as much honesty as possible—about our relationship to race as we grew up; about how our families talked about race; about how we are or aren’t talking about race and our racism with our partners and kids; about school segregation and the resources that are reserved for our white children; about what is or isn’t happening in our homes, schools, and communities to help our kids understand and fight racism and do better than we are.

If we get better at doing this, we might get better at talking to our white relatives and neighbors who voted for Trump. Although we won’t know where the conversations will end, we might know where to begin.

What to do:

Keep showing up in the streets and at town halls to denounce the intensifying racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism in this country.

Recognize that these things are both important and relatively easy to do.

Understand that as white people, we’ve been incentivized to do nothing difficult—nothing that would disrupt a society that has been structured to ensure that our children’s whiteness is determinative of a lifetime of opportunity and safety. For me, confronting this fact is where ease evaporates. Which is why we need to confront it together.

How do we do that?

Find out who’s leading work on racial justice and educational equity in your community. Listen and learn how you can best support these efforts. Join Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national group that organizes white people for racial justice and has a network for families. Invite people over for an interactive webinar facilitated by Raising Race Conscious Children and join the conversation at Embrace Race. Sign up for an Undoing Racism workshop. To support immigrant domestic workers—childcare providers, housecleaners, or home attendants—who are being targeted by this administration, join Hand in Hand’s Sanctuary Homes campaign. If you’re a teacher, visit Teaching Tolerance. Support Dignity in Schools to fight the school-to-prison pipeline.

Imagine if the hundreds of thousands of parents who mobilized around the country to fight high-stakes testing now start mobilizing as anti-racist parents. Anti-racist parenting can be—must be—community parenting. Imagine if white people believed that this fight was not “for” people of color, but for every one of us. If we could finally see how racism has damaged our own minds and hearts and is damaging our children.

That would put both love and justice at the center of the fight.

That’s how we play the long game against Donald Trump.

*My child identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun, “they.” It’s important to note that the security guards perceived my child to be male—and as a perceived white male, less of a threat than a black male.

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“BUT IT HAD ALSO INADVERTENTLY SENT ME THE MESSAGE THAT RACE WAS ON A VERY SHORT LIST OF TOPICS THAT POLITE PEOPLE DO NOT DISCUSS.” THIS IS SO SIMILAR TO GEORGE CARLIN’S UNIQUE MONOLOGUE, THE SEVEN DIRTY WORDS THAT YOU CAN’T SAY ON TELEVISION. EVERY NOW AND AGAIN I GO TO YOUTUBE TO WATCH THAT ROUTINE. IT NEVER FAILS TO MAKE ME GIGGLE, LIKE THE WONDERFUL SHOW OF LUCY AND ETHEL IN THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. HTTPS://GENIUS.COM/GEORGE-CARLIN-THE-SEVEN-WORDS-YOU-CAN-NEVER-SAY-ON-TELEVISION-ANNOTATED.
BUT BACK TO THE SUBJECT HERE. HOW DO WE INDOCTRINATE OUR KIDS WITH SOMETHING GOOD INSTEAD OF SOMETHING EVIL?

https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/summer-2014/what-white-children-need-to-know-about-race/
WHAT WHITE CHILDREN NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RACE
What White Children Need to Know About Race
Summer 2014

NAIS (NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS)

Growing up in the suburban Midwest, I (Ali Michael) never talked about race with my family. We were white, all of our neighbors were white, and it never occurred to us that there was anything to say about that. As a result, in later years, I developed a deep sense of shame whenever I talked about race — particularly in college, where I was expected to make mature personal and academic contributions to race dialogues.

At a certain point, I realized that this shame came from the silence about race in my childhood. The silence had two functions. It was at the root of my lack of competency to even participate in conversations on race. But it had also inadvertently sent me the message that race was on a very short list of topics that polite people do not discuss. My parents did not intend for me to receive this message, but because we never talked about race, I learned to feel embarrassed whenever it came up. And so even when I wanted to participate in the conversation, I had to contend with deep feelings of shame and inadequacy first.

Research on white racial socialization is beginning to emerge within the field of racial socialization that makes it clear that many white people share my experience. In particular, the research suggests that for fear of perpetuating racial misunderstandings, being seen as a racist, making children feel badly, or simply not knowing what to say, many white parents tend to believe that there is never a right time to initiate a conversation about race.1 They talk to their children about race if it becomes relevant in their lives (mostly in negative contexts). Otherwise, they tell their children that people are all the same and that they should not see race.

While white parents’ intention is to convey to their children the belief that race shouldn’t matter, the message their children receive is that race, in fact, doesn’t matter. The intent and aim are noble, but in order for race not to matter in the long run, we have to acknowledge that, currently, it does matter a great deal. If white parents want their children to contribute to what researchers Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer describe as a “racially just America”2 in which race does not unjustly influence one’s life opportunities, their children will need to learn awareness and skills that they cannot acquire through silence and omission.

White Racial Socialization

Scholars differentiate between active and passive socialization, as well as proactive and reactive socialization. Active racial socialization occurs in contexts in which racial socialization is deemed essential for children’s ability to effectively navigate their world. Because many white families generally do not consider racial competencies among the skills their children will need when they grow up, they tend to socialize passively and reactively. This strategy leads to silence about race in many white households. Because U.S. society is already structured racially, silence leaves unchallenged the many racial messages children receive from a number of socializing agents, which consistently place whites at the top of the racial hierarchy. Silence is thus hardly a passive stance; labeled “whiteness-at-work” by Irene H. Yoon, education professor at the University of Utah,3 silence is a socialization strategy that perpetuates a racist status quo.

Racial socialization for white youth, then, is the process by which they learn what it means to be white in a society that currently values whiteness. It differs markedly from the racial socialization of people of color because of the ways that whites tend to benefit materially from systems of racism.

While the research on white racial socialization is new, a 2014 study by Bartoli et al.4 describes the results of 13 in-depth family interviews in which white parents and their children (ages 12 to 18) were interviewed both separately and together as a family in the first qualitative study of its kind. They found that most of the white families opted to socialize their children by telling them not to be racist, not to talk about race, not to use the word “black,” and not to notice racial differences. They wanted their children to believe that all people are the same and that racism is bad. They defined racism as overt, violent, and, for the most part, anachronistic. They felt that, if they emphasize these messages, they will impart to their children messages of racial equality. However, the individual interviews with their children showed that when children only know what not to do or not to talk about, they don’t have the lenses to understand racial dynamics in their lives, nor the skills to address them.

Regarding race, the messages that white teens in the Bartoli et al. study received were contradictory and incomplete. While they believed that everyone is the same, that race is superfluous, and that hard work determines where one gets in life, they also professed beliefs about differences among racial groups, including that black people are lazy or poor, that poor black neighborhoods are dangerous, and that black people are physically stronger than whites. Because these white teens lacked a systemic analysis of racism, they had no way of understanding the impact of the structural racism they observed around them, such as the de facto segregation through academic tracking in their schools or in the geography of their cities. Thus, in spite of the fact that they had been taught that race does not matter and that they should be color-blind, when faced with a question that challenged them to explain structural racism, the only answers available to them were ones that relied on racial stereotypes. Overall, the teens did not seem to be able to differentiate between what is racist and what is, simply, racial. They tended to classify any mention of race as racist.

The Role of Schools in White Racial Socialization

While most scholars of racial socialization agree that the primary means of racial socialization happens in the home, there is also broad consensus that it is a multidirectional process and that messages reach children through books, media, television, music, and schools. Many white parents in the Bartoli et al. study used school as one of their only conscious racial socialization strategies, sending their children to racially diverse schools in the hope that they would learn the racial competence they needed by being in a racially diverse environment. Yet few schools currently engage in conscious policies to support the development of positive racial identity, in spite of the fact that research has shown that such work could lead to a better racial climate as well as stronger academic outcomes for all students.5

Independent schools tend to have mission statements and/or diversity statements that indicate that they want their school communities to be diverse. But such statements tend to reflect the racial socialization goals of most white parents: wanting to have racially diverse communities in which race does not matter. They rarely reflect an awareness of the need to teach racial skills and competencies in order to foster healthy racially diverse communities. Nor do they reflect an awareness that white children need to learn specific competencies in order to be full members of those racially diverse environments.

Some may argue that school is not an appropriate place for racial socialization. This view assumes that it is possible to maintain racial neutrality in schools. In fact, the neutral/color-blind approach that most schools currently use does racially socialize youth — it simply does so in a particular direction. As stated earlier, silence is a racial message and a “tool of whiteness.” In order to support the goals of their diversity mission statements and work toward a “racially just America,” schools need to take a more proactive approach to teaching white students about race and racial identity.

Howard Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania runs programs in schools intended to help black youth contemplate the messages they receive about race from different sources and fortify themselves against negative racial messages that hinder them from being fully themselves or fully successful. Such racial socialization makes it possible for black students to resist, confront, deconstruct, analyze, and/or embrace the racial socialization they are receiving at school and from their families, to take more ownership of their racial identity, and to make it positive.

What would the parallel process of positive racial identity development look like for white students?

Our research team set out to design a set of strategies for schools that want to take proactive steps toward assisting white children to develop a positive racial identity. We begin with messages, providing a general framework for white racial socialization. We then address specific content knowledge and skills that would empower students to become proactive in their engagement with racial issues and conversations.

Messages About Race

One could fill a book with the myriad messages about race in this nation. What matters most are the messages we want our students to hear. Here’s a short list of some of the central messages schools can offer.

Talking about race is not racist. It’s OK — and important.

Because white students receive color-blind messages, they come to believe that merely talking about race is racist and, therefore, something that should be avoided. Students need to learn that there’s a vast difference between talking about race and being racist. Racial talk leads to greater racial understanding and helps undermine the power of racist laws, structures, and traditions. Racist talk, on the other hand, helps to perpetuate the status quo and to further entrench racial myths and stereotypes. Avoiding race talk makes race itself unspeakable, which, in turn, gives it a negative connotation. Most white adults and teens participate in conversations about race only when there is a problem. They need support in changing their worldview to see the ways in which race is always present, regardless of whether there are problems associated with it. Further, race and racial differences aren’t all bad. Racial tension is a reality, but so are cross-racial friendships and communities.

Race is an essential part of one’s identity. Being white may have little meaning to some whites, but that does not mean it has no meaning. All white people are white in the context of a society that continues to disadvantage people of color based on race. Being white, in essence, means not having to deal with those disadvantages and therefore not having to notice them. Schools can help foster awareness about the meaning of whiteness by helping white students develop a positive racial identity, which requires an understanding of systemic racism. While students may need to be reassured that they did not ask to be white, or for any of the advantages that might come with it, they should also know that the reality in which they are embedded ascribes unearned privileges to their whiteness. It is through seeing themselves in a larger racialized context that white people can begin to understand how they can work to change racism — and change what it means to be white.

Create a positive white identity that allows white students to move toward it. In her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Daniel Tatum suggests that, in the traditional context of race, there are only three ways to be white: ignorant, color-blind, and racist. With options like these, she asks, who would choose to identify with their whiteness? She suggests that we have to create a fourth way to be white: the antiracist white identity. Schools need to create spaces in which students can identify as white and simultaneously work against racism. Whites have choices regarding how to use the privilege that comes from being white. All of the above considerations as well as content knowledge below can foster an antiracist white identity.

Content Knowledge

At the very least, schools that believe in equity and justice and want their students to be future leaders need to help students — especially white students — understand the history of race and racism and how both play out in contemporary society. This racial content knowledge constitutes a basic social literacy that all students should have.

Be clear about the meaning of “race.”

Race is a social construct, not a biological fact. But too many people believe the latter — confusing a few distinguishing traits with essential difference. So schools first need to clarify our biological sameness and explore the implications of race as a social construct. One strategy for doing this is to ask students, “What does it mean to be ________ (Asian, black, Latino, Native American, white)?” Then point out how their answers usually do not correlate with phenotypic characteristics, but rather with social ideas and constructs. Studying how whiteness was constructed historically through institutions that served whites while denying services to nonwhites or through residential segregation also helps students see how whiteness began to be associated with certain social patterns and realities.

Understand systemic racism.

Understanding systemic racism helps change the conversation from one of individual culpability to one in which we are all heavily influenced by our position within a system of racial stratification. It helps students broaden their lenses beyond their immediate surroundings and see how racism shapes the wider landscape of their lives. Without a systemic analysis of racism, it is impossible to understand why race continues to matter. Students must develop a sense of how systemic racism works on an individual, community, and institutional level.

Learn how antiracist action is relevant to all.

The course of history for any population in the United States was and will continue to be determined by the history of all racial groups. Even though they tend to be taught in isolation, racial group histories are, in fact, deeply interconnected and interdependent. Without explicit acknowledgment of such interdependence, students will find it difficult to understand their connection to other racial groups.6 Further, the history of antiracist struggles in the United States involved white people. The stories of these antiracists throughout history should be taught so that white students can envision possible ways to be white and antiracist.

Understand stereotypes and their counternarratives.

Students are exposed to numerous stereotypes of people of color. It’s essential for students to be able to recognize these, understand how they might have developed, analyze the function they play to maintain social hierarchies, and learn accurate information that counters the stereotypes. They need to hear counternarratives — stories of people whose lives do not conform to the stereotypes. They also need multiple stories of various racial groups to fully move beyond stereotypes and understand the richness existing within each community.

Skills

Part of the work of supporting an antiracist identity for white students involves teaching them skills to be proactive in discussing race, confronting racism, building interracial friendships, and acknowledging racism.

Develop self-awareness about racist beliefs.

Building a positive racial identity requires one to recognize and counter one’s inaccurate beliefs about race. We routinely learn stereotypical and incorrect information from the world around us. Students should be encouraged to realize that no one is free of racist beliefs; therefore, the aim is not to not have them, but rather to recognize them and access the content knowledge needed to refute them. Self-awareness about race is a lifelong practice that asks us to notice race and racial bias consistently and critically.

Analyze media critically.

Learning to filter and evaluate the racial messages students receive from media can help students apply their knowledge about race and recognize its impact in the world around them. This skill also helps them begin to realize the ways in which racist messages are delivered and reinforced. Such analytical skills will then provide them with further knowledge and language to resist and counter those messages in conscious and proactive ways.

Learn how to intervene.

White youth (and many white adults) are often at a loss about what to do when they witness racism. They need skills to recognize, name, intervene in, and/or reach out for assistance in racist incidents. Such skills might include recognizing relevant situations, identifying one’s own sphere of influence, and accessing resources to respond either in the moment or afterward. It is not always appropriate or safe to intervene with racism in the moment, be it overt or subtle. But the capacity to name it, to withdraw from it, to ally oneself with the target, or to otherwise refuse to collude with it can be an empowering act for the student and, in itself, promote social change.

Manage racial stress.

It is essential to provide students with tools to be able to understand their emotional reactions and learn to manage them. Strategies include identifying the sources of anxiety, normalizing them, and accessing relevant support in allies. Over time, the very process of confronting racism and withstanding the relevant anxiety makes the practice easier to navigate.

Honor and respect racial affinity spaces for students of color.

Many schools now recognize the efficacy of creating racial affinity spaces for students of color, particularly with regard to countering the effects of stereotype threat7 and creating a sense of safety and camaraderie within predominantly white spaces. Learning to accept that such spaces can be important resources for peers of color, without feeling threatened or excluded from those dynamics, can be an important step for white students who want to participate in the construction of a healthy multiracial community. Racially competent white students would understand such a gathering of students of color as ultimately supportive of interracial relationships, rather than in opposition to them. White racial affinity groups can also be powerful spaces for white students to cultivate and affirm their antiracist identities. This would not be a white cultural group or a white activity space; white students should never meet in an exclusively designated white space except for explicitly antiracist purposes. That said, so much growth can happen when white people challenge and support one another to learn about race and racism, particularly because white students do often have different learning needs from students of color that can be accommodated in an affinity group space.

Develop authentic relationships with peers of color and other white students.

This skill involves learning to connect with peers of all different races with an understanding of the racialized context within which those relationships take place. In this context, the ability to name and discuss race in all of its facets (both enriching and problematic) is essential, so that everyone’s reality can be accounted for, engaged with, and affirmed. This, in turn, will lead to more authentic interracial relationships.

Recognize one’s racist and antiracist identities.

Students must be able to acknowledge the “both/and” possibility of simultaneously being racist and antiracist. It’s not unusual for white Americans to project both a sense of friendliness and rejection toward people of color.8 Acknowledging this seemingly contradictory state of being can be crucial to breaking down the binary in which people are always either “racist” or “not racist” and creates the space to receive important critical feedback that may challenge one’s self-image as antiracist, yet simultaneously offer the possibility of growing in one’s antiracism.

Racially Just Schools

White children are racially socialized by a number of forces, many of which, as educators, we cannot directly control. Schools, however, can play a crucial role in shaping racial socialization for white children. Ideally, white racial socialization in school would promote children’s abilities to build productive and genuine relationships with the people of color in their lives, and to recognize the effect that race has on their experience. In this way, children can be more than simply passive participants in an unjust racial system, but actually shape the racial reality in which they are embedded in the very ways that so many parents and schools already wish for.

The white racial socialization perspectives and skills proposed here will contribute not only to healthier schools and communities, but also to healthier individuals, less susceptible to the acquisition of misinformation and therefore less likely to perpetuate harm toward others. These skills and perspectives create spaces where it is more difficult for racism to thrive because there are more white people resisting it and deconstructing it. This work stands in stark contrast to color-blindness, which provides ample room for the status quo to develop stronger roots. A community in which critical race analysis plays a central role is one in which people truly have a choice about how to be more fully themselves, outside of the preestablished roles assigned by racial constructs. Given the importance of this work, it’s hard to imagine why we wouldn’t embrace it.

If we want a racially just world, we need racially aware schools.

Notes
1. Eleonora Bartoli, Ali Michael, Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, Howard C. Stevenson, Rachel F. Shor, and Shannon E. McClain. Chasing Colorblindness: White Family Racial Socialization. Manuscript submitted for publication. 2014.

2. Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer. “To Imagine and Pursue Racial Justice.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 15(2): 259–289, 2012.

3. Irene H. Yoon. “The Paradoxical Nature of Whiteness-at-Work in the Daily Life of Schools and Teacher Communities.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 15(5): 587–613.

4. Bartoli et al., 2014.

5. Diane Hughes, Emilie P. Smith, Deborah J. Johnson, Howard C. Stevenson, and Paul Spicer, “Parents’ Ethnic-Racial Socialization: A Review of Research and Directions for Future Study,” Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 2006, 747–770.

6. See texts by Ronald Takaki and James Loewen.

7. Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, New York: W.M. Norton & Company, 2010.

8. Irwin Katz and Glen Hass, “Racial Ambivalence and American Value Conflict: Correlational and Priming Studies of Dual Cognitive Structures,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55(6): 893–905, 1988.

AUTHOR

Ali Michael
Ali Michael is the director of P–12 consulting services and professional development for the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education and the founder of the Race Institute for K–12 Educators. She is also the author of Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Education, and Inquiry (forthcoming). For more information, see www.alimichael.org or contact Ali at ali.s.michael@gmail.com.

Eleonora Bartoli
Eleonora Bartoli is the director of graduate programs in counseling psychology and professor of psychology at Arcadia University. She can be contacted at bartoliE@arcadia.edu.



THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT SOMETHING THAT I HATE TO THINK ABOUT – WHAT ARE THE RESULTS OF ONGOING AND UNTHINKING RACISM? THIS IS WHAT I GREW UP WITH IN 1950, NORTH CAROLINA. UNFORTUNATELY, WE NEED TO ALL GET ALONG, WHICH WILL TAKE MUTUAL EFFORT. THAT ISN’T ENOUGH OF COURSE, BECAUSE IT STOPS SHORT OF LOVE, BUT IT IS WAY BETTER THAN GOING TO A HARDWARE STORE AND BUYING DOZENS OF TORCHES TO USE FOR THE FIRST MODERN-DAY KKK RALLY IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA JUST LAST YEAR – JUST MONTHS AFTER DONALD TRUMP WAS INAUGURATED. ACCIDENT, OR NO? SO, TO THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE, I’M GOING TO SAY, IN ALL TRUE COMPASSION FOR YOUR SITUATION, THAT THOUGH WE MAY NOT BE ON THE STEP THAT YOU WANT US TO BE ON YET, WE’RE WALKING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION – OR TRYING TO. I INVITE YOU TO WALK TOWARD THE INVISIBLE LINE AND MEET US THERE.

https://www.romper.com/p/honestly-sometimes-im-uncomfortable-with-my-children-making-white-friends-59619
Honestly, Sometimes I'm Uncomfortable With My Children Making White Friends
By Margaret e Jacobsen
June 9 2017

Once, I was at a friend's house with my two kids and her two children. At one point, the oldest of her two kids walked up to my daughter and said, "Why did God give you this gross hair? Why didn't he give you princess hair like mine?" I just stared at her, because I couldn't fathom why she would ever say something like that. But thankfully, my daughter didn't get upset. Instead, she retorted, "My hair is perfect. I have a black mom and a white dad, so it actually makes my hair better than your straight hair." Then she went back to playing. This was about three years ago. It was the moment that I realized that not everyone talks to their children about race, which can put my children in an uncomfortable position — and I want to avoid putting them in that position whenever possible.

My children are black and white. They're extremely proud of their race, but still, I get nervous when my kids make friends with white children. That's not because I'm anti-white, or because I think that white children make terrible friends. It's more that I get nervous about what these children are being taught in their homes by their white parents. I get nervous about the language used, statements like "We don't see color!" or "We don't even notice that your son/daughter is black!" Or even, "We don't talk about race with our children. It's too much for them right now."

My children know who they are and where they came from. They have been raised to celebrate, acknowledge, and honor their heritage. The thought of sending them to play in a home where that would be questioned, challenged, or in some cases completely ignored, leaves me wanting to avoid playdates with most white families.

Courtesy of Margaret Jacobsen

In the past, I never really thought about my children making friends with white children. For the most part, I was just happy they were making friends. But one day at my son Beck's preschool, I was talking to another mother about being black and raising a mixed son. She turned to me and said, "We don't even see Beck's color! He's just Chance's friend!"

It felt like someone had kicked me in my stomach. When someone says they don't see color, they're simply stating that they refuse to acknowledge someone else's ethnicity, thus erasing their background and culture. I couldn't respond to what she said. She stood there smiling at me, as if I should be thanking her for saying that, when all I wanted to do was shake her and say, "How do you not see that he's black? It's OK to see that!"

After that conversation, I stopped working as hard to make playdates with her and her son. My son would ask almost daily when their next playdate would be, but I always said, "Hopefully, soon," knowing that it wasn't going to happen.

"I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER AND A WRITER," I TELL THEM. "I WRITE ABOUT RAISING BLACK CHILDREN, BEING A BLACK PARENT, AND WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE BLACK IN AMERICA." FOR ME, THIS IS A NOT-SO-SUBTLE WAY OF SAYING, "RACE IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT PART OF OUR LIVES AND OUR IDENTITIES."

We live about 20 minutes outside of a big city, and the school my kids attend is in the suburbs, which means that their school is 90% white. That means making playdates with white kids is kind of unavoidable, but I try to do a sort of vetting process with parents beforehand. The vetting starts the moment my children introduce me to another kid's parents. I start by just talking about the work I do.

"I'm a photographer and a writer," I tell them. "I write about raising black children, being a black parent, and what it's like to be black in America." For me, this is a not-so-subtle way of saying, "Race is an extremely important part of our lives and our identities."

The ideal answer is usually just a simple "That's interesting! I'd love to read what you write," or even a simple, honest answer about not knowing much about race relations in our country. But sometimes, it's something like, "Oh, we don't see color in our home!" At that point, I make a mental note that we will not be making playdates with that family. Same goes for: "Oh, wow, you're really into politics then? That's not really something I have interest in." When someone says they don't believe in being political, it shows both how privileged they are and how they are actively choosing to remain ignorant of politics, despite the current political climate.

Courtesy of Margaret Jacobsen

It's not that I think families of color can't be friends with white families. Of course they can. It's more that I'm concerned about how white parents are raising white children. I'm concerned that they don't have conversations about race in their home, and that if they do, they don't skip over important aspects like slavery, and how it's created a foundation of racism in our country.

I DON'T WANT MY CHILDREN PLAYING WITH KIDS WHOSE PARENTS BELIEVE IN RACIST STEREOTYPES. I DON'T WANT MY CHILDREN PLAYING IN A HOME WHERE RECOGNIZING OTHER PEOPLE'S HUMANITY ISN'T A FOCUS.

I don't want my children playing with kids whose parents believe in racist stereotypes. I don't want my children playing in a home where recognizing other people's humanity isn't a focus. And I don't want my children playing in a home where parents claim they don't "see color," because they're too "nice" to acknowledge that race is an important part of how we interact with each other in this country. Being "nice" isn't enough to keep black children safe.

Courtesy of Margaret Jacobsen

Our home is a place where compassion comes first. We don't water down discussions of race to exclude the realities of white supremacy. We talk about it. We talk about being black, about the white side of the family, about what it means to have light skin privilege, which my children have. We make sure that whoever comes over is respected and loved, but who they are is never neglected or ignored. We honor the cultures, traditions, and stories that are carried into our home by those who visit us. We don't silence anyone, in ways that I've seen other parents do to my children when they talk about being black. I've seen parents say to my kids "We haven't talked to them about black people yet, they're not ready." My children are confused by this. How is who they are something to talk about "later"? And why do my young children have to conceal their pride to make white children more comfortable?

Unless white parents are doing the necessary work to dismantle racism, like having frank conversations about race with their own children, addressing their own racial biases, and talking about the realities of white privilege, my children will not be having playdates with those families. I will not go out of my way to educate white parents on how to treat my children with respect and dignity. They should already be doing that.



I INCLUDED THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE, THOUGH IT IS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT LEARNING A SECOND LANGUAGE IN ORDER TO ADAPT TO A NEW ENVIRONMENT, IT SEEMS TO ME THAT LEARNING THINGS LIKE SOCIALIZING WITH A VERY DIFFERENT NEW GROUP OF PEOPLE IN ANY SURVIVAL SITUATION IS SIMILAR. THIS ARTICLE SPECIFICALLY MENTIONS A TERM I FIRST HEARD MANY YEARS AGO -- “CULTURE SHOCK.” MOST BLACKS AND WHITES HAVE SOME LEVEL OF MUTUAL CULTURE SHOCK, EACH TO THE OTHER. BOTH NEED TO WORK TOWARD AN ACCEPTABLE AND LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. WEARING YOUR PANTS HANGING DOWN AROUND YOUR BARELY DEVELOPED YOU KNOW WHAT WILL HAVE TO BE DISCARDED IN PLACE OF SOMETHING MORE INTELLECTUAL, IF YOU ARE TO SURVIVE. THOSE THINGS AREN’T REALLY INSURMOUNTABLE IF OUR ATTITUDE IS POSITIVE AND OUR APPROACH IS GENTLE AND CARING. I SAY SURVIVAL, BECAUSE THE BLACKS WHO FIRST CAME HERE DIDN’T COME VOLUNTARILY BY ANY MEANS, AND NEITHER DID ANY REFUGEE GROUP. THEY CAME TO AVOID BEING KILLED.

“SCHUMANN IDENTIFIES EIGHT FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE SOCIAL DISTANCE: SOCIAL DOMINANCE, INTEGRATION PATTERN, ENCLOSURE, COHESIVENESS, SIZE FACTOR, CULTURAL CONGRUENCE, ATTITUDE FACTOR, AND INTENDED LENGTH OF RESIDENCE. HE ALSO IDENTIFIES THREE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE: MOTIVATION, ATTITUDE, AND CULTURE SHOCK.[8]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acculturation_Model
Acculturation Model
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In second-language acquisition, the Acculturation Model is a theory proposed by John Schumann to describe the acquisition process of a second language (L2) by members of ethnic minorities[1] that typically include immigrants, migrant workers, or the children of such groups.[2] This acquisition process takes place in natural contexts of majority language setting. The main suggestion of the theory is that the acquisition of a second language is directly linked to the acculturation process, and learners’ success is determined by the extent to which they can orient themselves to the target language culture.[3]

Background[edit]

The acculturation model came into light with Schumann’s study of six non-English learners where one learner named Alberto, unlike the other five, had little progress in the acquisition process of English.[4]

Description[edit]

The process of acculturation was defined by Brown as "the process of being adapted to a new culture" which involves a new orientation of thinking and feeling on the part of an L2 learner.[5] According to Brown, as culture is an integral part of a human being, the process of acculturation takes a deeper turn when the issue of language is brought on the scene. Schumann based his Acculturation Model on two sets of factors: social and psychological. Schumann asserts that the degree to which the second-language learners acculturate themselves towards the culture of target-language (TL) group generally depends on social and psychological factors; and these two sorts of factors will determine respectively the level of social distance and psychological distance an L2 learner is having in course of his learning the target-language.[6] Social distance, as Ellis notes, concerns the extent to which individual learners can identify themselves with members of TL group and, thereby, can achieve contact with them. Psychological distance is the extent to which individual learners are at ease with their target-language learning task.[7]

Schumann identifies eight factors that influence social distance: social dominance, integration pattern, enclosure, cohesiveness, size factor, cultural congruence, attitude factor, and intended length of residence. He also identifies three factors that influence psychological distance: motivation, attitude, and culture shock.[8] Schumann later sought to extend the acculturation model by assessing contemporary cognitive models for second language acquisition, including McLaughlin’s cognitive theory, Hatch and Hawkins’ experiential approach, Bialystok and Ryan’s model of knowledge and control dimensions, Anderson’s active control of thought framework, and Gasser's connectionist lexical memory framework[9].