Green shirts are better!

The best way to raise a child to not be racist is put them into an integrated environment and say absolutely nothing about skin color. You're sure?

Try this exercise: In a classroom randomly assign red t-shirts to half the students and green t-shirts to the other half. Ask them to wear the shirts every day for a couple weeks but say nothing about what the shirts are for or why the kids should wear them. What will happen? Will anyone be surprised if by the end of the first day the kids begin to separate themselves by shirt color and by the end of the two weeks have declared, "The red shirts are better than the green!" "No, the green shirts are better!"

In an article for Newsweek, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman discuss the latest research into racism. They found two major things.

The first was about the kids. The little ones, some as young as 6 months, go through a process of deciding, "You're like me." "You're not like me." They categorize things. And skin color is an obvious category. Through categories they also make assumptions. If you are like me you enjoy the same things I do. I can relate to you. Observing racial categories could lead to kids figuring out such things as, "Only brown kids are allowed to eat breakfast at school." or "Only brown kids play basketball so I had better play baseball."

The second was about the parents. Mom and Dad have no idea how to discuss race. Many believe to call attention to skin color is to make their kids pay more attention to skin-color differences, to make them racist. But what the kids need is an explanation for skin color ("Their ancestors are from Africa, yours are from Europe") and assurance that skin color doesn't matter.