Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Prejudice: Taught or Learned?

Prejudice: unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. A preconceived preference or idea. I have an issue going on in my house right now that I am NOT sure how to deal with. I don't have any imagined 'fix its' yet, but I am working on it. Let's see...One of my boys was caught drawing a picture that was considered 'prejudiced' of which I needed to see to believe. Well, I saw it, and it is INDEED what I would call prejudice written and drawn by one of my children. Let me give you an idea of my upbringing. My father is military, he brought home soldiers of MANY colors and sizes. We met many of them at his work whom he treated with respect regardless of rank, or any other difference for that matter. THIS is what was shown to me as a child. This is what I learned was RIGHT. I never knew one person disliked another even though I grew up in North Carolina, which had a LOT of discomfort that I was never shown and never knew about as a child. So, growing up that way I raised my children the same way. They grew up in Alaska, which very rarely had any prejudice anywhere that I noticed to cause a big upset. People didn't claim to be better or worse than each other when it came to skin color. (Maybe kids thought they were better because of the money their parents had...but not much else) For YEARS they grew up not seeing a difference. THEN WE MOVED..............................................................Apparently I must elaborate. I won't say where although most of you know, but in this new duty station, my boys are exposed to MANY prejudice. Race against race of all kinds, but one in particular. Again, not going into detail much to save face for this place. Why? I don't know yet, but 'lifers' should have respect for their home. Ugh. Well, two of the three boys don't agree with it and WILL NOT put up with it for anything. They have standards and stick by them. Well, the third, not so much, obviously. He has learned to hate a certain race by his peers and listening to talk from other adults. He was not taught this behavior at home. Now, what I wonder is how many kids do as my son and learn this behavior from the kids that were taught it from their own family? How do we prevent such stuff from be show to our children by their peers? I have talked to him, and it goes away for months, but eventually I find myself back in this spot with him. Everyone has some sort of prejudice, even me, deep inside. You may not agree, you may get mad, but I honestly believe we all do. Old people slow you up driving or at a cash register? Kids annoy you with their loud mouths and crappy attitudes? Did you not think this was a form of prejudice? It is. It might have another name if you want to be technical, but it's the same idea. So why can't adults just have those thoughts and feelings but keep them to themselves? Why can't they just let their kids decide on their own? Even if you had your own bad experience, even several bad experiences, with one type of people does NOT make all of them bad. Well, my son seems to think so. He has them all grouped together in his mind, and pure ugliness is what I see when I looked at his thoughts on paper. I hate it. It makes me feel terrible as a parent that I missed something or didn't work as hard as I should in teaching him that this is NOT okay. What are my plans as a big bad 'teach them a lesson' kind of mom? I am getting my son together with a child from a race he seems to have preformed opinions about. I happen to know that this child is a lot like my own, and he is going to help my son learn that what he previously learned from his peers at school is COMPLETELY wrong. Then we will have that talk again and again until he goes back home.

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