Today I want to talk about the Anderson Cooper video. As soon as watched the video I knew that I wanted to write my blog about this topic. As I have expressed my feelings in my past blog and during class discussions I am against stereotypes since I am a minority and my Mexican origin is often stereotyped.
As I was watching the video and the children responses I could not help but to ask myself the following questions: Why are this children as such a young age are already stereotyping their own race? Who told them the darker color people were the "ugly, bad, or dumb kids?" Is this something they just assume as they grow older? How do they know the difference between being black, white, or brown? Are the responses they are giving have something to do with personal experiences as such a young age? Or is society training our brains without us even realizing? WHY???!!! Everybody has different answers and opinions and perhaps nobody will ever know why. I believe that some of these children responses could be reflecting their parents and families beliefs but I also think that society plays a huge factor in this children responses. For example; Cinderella, Snow White, The Beauty and the Beast, Woodie and Buzz from Toy Story are all white characters that are the "Heroes" in these children movies. The princesses are beautiful and the Super Heroes are strong and kill the bad guys and every kid wants to be the main character that everybody loves and thinks they are beautiful. I remember when I was little my sister and I used to fight because we both wanted to be the pink power ranger, Kimberly was white and the prettiest one, she was the most popular and was one of the main power rangers. When I was little and used to fight with my sister I didn't really know that people didn't like black or I could not really understated why white were always the princesses I just knew that's what I liked and couldn't explain why until I grew older. I am not sure if I thought they were pretty because they were white, but I am sure that if the princesses were the opposite color, I would have liked them and would want to be them, but the problem was that they never were the opposite color.
I think that is up to us to raise the younger generation the right way and away from all the stereotypes. Even though racism and stereotypes will always be there it is up to us to make the difference and not let the "ignorance" take over us. I found a really interesting video that I would like to share with you guys. This shows the sad stereotype against dark colored people and could potentially be an explanation on why children pick the dark color as the "bad one".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAkDHuimJRc
Itzel,
ReplyDeleteI just watched the video you recommended which led me to another video that I asked everyone to watch for tomorrow -- posted on D2L.
This was a fascinating look at how different people respond to racism -- what do you think you would have done? I like to think I would have spoken right up and labeled what was happening -- the thing about racism (and all of the other "isms" is that people don't always recognize them for what they are. So much oppression is invisible and, as Tim Wise says in a clip I watched in Caleb's blog, "you can't take on things that you can can't see." Take a look at his blog if you get a chance!
You give excellent examples of your own socialization with white princess dolls as the socializing agents! If you have children, I hope you can find many toys that show diversity as beautiful!