The Vitality of Cultural Climate in Children Upbringing - Assignment Example

Parental philosophy regarding raising children in what they perceive as a challenging cultural climate The cultural climate plays a vital role in how a child is brought up by its parents. However, like anything else, cultural values also change with time resulting in changing perspectives of parents regarding child rearing. This paper will focus on two articles with a common theme of how parents set their own philosophies to bring up their children in what they perceive as a challenging cultural climate. The challenge in raising children lies in the possible entrapment of parental fears, and apprehensions regarding their children’s attitudes and response to their social surroundings. In the essay, “Coloring Lessons”, the author David Updike has described a trip he once made with his 3-year-old son, Wesley to an annual fair. While, David thought it as a perfect opportunity for his son to grab some joyful memories, he was perplexed by Wesley’s disinteresting approach. It was only when Wesley expressed the reason of his uneasiness; “Too many pink people,” (Updike) that David was, for the first time, confronted with the fact that his son is showing signs of distinguishing people with their skin color. This first time experience of a parent that has all the potential to become long-term worries regarding bringing up a child in a challenging cultural environment is also described in the second essay, “Talking Race With a Toddler Who Wasn’t Talking About Race at All” by Tamika Thompson. Here, Tamika was sharing a moment with her 27-month-old daughter, Morgan, who was playing with some toys. It was when Morgan asked her mother to pass on the black toy that made Tamika closely observe the toys to find out the reason that made Morgan base her identification of the toy figures on color, and she realized that “one had blue eyes and the other brown eyes with slightly darker skin” (Thompson). This observation instantly caused the mother to panic wondering how her “barely potty-trained daughter” has learnt to distinguish humanoid toys with their skin color. In both the cases, the parents are struck with the realization even though racism is a concept understood only by adults, their fear that kids will absorb this negative issue from their surroundings was not unrealistic like David realized when his 3-year-old, instead of enjoying the fair like normal children, was more concerned with the number of pink-skinned people. For most parents, their greatest fear is that racial profiling is not just a social annoyance but also it can have real and direct consequences on their children. In the first case, Wesley’s mother is darker-skinned than her son but the difference in skin color first struck him when he began attending a day-care which was predominantly African-American; “he returned one day and asked whether he really was ‘gray’” (Updike). In the case of Morgan, Tamika’s fear though same as David was in fact unfounded since her daughter was actually distinguishing the toys based on their hair color and not skin color. When she was asked the reason why she called the doll black she stated one doll has black hair and the other one has brown hair. However, the similarity between the stories lies in the fact that both David and Tamika are aware that their children are merely talking about colors as they can see and that they are not associating color with a person’s ethnicity. Therefore, their concern is about their children’s future dilemmas in a world of challenging cultural climate. David Updike is a white American (“not the color of pure snow”) born in Massachusetts while Tamika Thompson is a black woman born to a “fair-skinned African-American mother”. The two writers belong to two different ethnicities. While David being white-skinned probably was not subjected to sneering comments about racism all his life, Tamika being black-skinned has experienced overt and rude comments about racism. However, both the writer, as parents, are having to feel similar concern about their children. Tamika was first struck with the dread that her daughter has somehow learnt to distinguish between skin colors when the latter asked her to hand over the black doll. However, it was soon revealed that Morgan was talking about hair color of the dolls thus her natural innocence triggered alarms in her mother’s adult mind. Similarly, David who began to dread inculcation of racism in his son’s mind began to wish that “his state of unhappiness had less to do with too many “pink” people than with too many people” (Updike). David’s concern was more about his son’s future since it was apparent that Wesley was only stating what he was seeing since at the age of 3 it was not possible for him to have racial prejudices like adults. It is an extreme crisis that parents face when trying to teach their children the negative elements of the society while still trying to preserve their innocence. For both David and Tamika, their dreams are concentrated on bringing up their respective children in a world of multiple cultures to hold unbiased perspective about racism. They want to inculcate in their children that skin color is not something that can describe a person’s character and personality and hence this is not a basis for holding positive or negative judgement about a person. In the first story, David and his wife taught their son the meaning of colors in the context of people’s skin like brown being the color of the skin of Wesley’s mother. For David, a politically correct approach is the right manner to educate children about the facts of life; “Weasley was learning his colors, after all, and it seemed silly and misleading to be describing people by colors they clearly are not” (Updike). It is like telling the child that skin color is a natural phenomenon and is not a basis of judging people, and there are more ways (height or dress color) to distinguish between people. Similarly, to prevent their daughter from distinguishing people based on skin color, Tamika and her husband have taught their little daughter to recognize colors as a feature of inanimate objects like books and toys. They have encouraged Morgan to mix with children of diverse cultural backgrounds so that she does not develop the feeling of kinship with children of her own skin color like explained by Tamika, “How would I explain skin color to someone who had just learned the difference between the green and blue crayons?” (Thompson). This is practically the concern of majority of parents in this world – how to preserve a child’s innocence in a world of grown ups. Tamika has learnt from various articles that it is more viable to accept the realities in front of a child than denying them since in the end the child cannot be refrained from facing such realities. As such, Tamika believes that existence of cultural differences is a fact that needs to be made aware to a child but at the same time, care should be taken that none should be degraded children tend to emulate the behaviors of adults than absorbing the meaning of speeches. She further confessed that she will teach her child that there is nothing wrong in having different skin color and all people deserve equal treatment. This way Morgan will grow up to recognize black and white as mere colors and not means of categorizing people. Similar was the case for David who attempted to divert his son’s attention from the skin colors of the people in the crowd to other aspects of their physical appearances. Therefore, when Wesley identified a boy by his brown skin, he offered him to identify a person based on his height or the color his hat or shirt. The common philosophy that is believed by both Morgan and Wesley’s parents is that their children should not grow up to use the concept of color as a platform for distinguishing between different people. When Wesley talks about pink or brown people, he is merely stating what he is seeing since at age of 3, he cannot be aware of the prejudices that adults hold on the basis of skin color. David attempts to adopt a philosophy according to which race is not an issue, it is just color. For a child, everyone is same until he learns the concept of racism as he goes through life. A person cannot be judged by color like David has given the example of “pink” which can become the skin tone of any people when skin becomes tanned or when they are angry or laughing. David’s philosophy of child-rearing is that while children should learn to differentiate toys based on their color, they should not use the same to judge people; “you might want to adopt a vocabulary that holds true for skin tones and for crayons” (Updike). Tamika believes in the philosophy of teaching her daughter the truth of racism but at the same time inculcating in her that all people, irrespective of skin color, deserve equal treatment, “What’s unnatural is the treatment of black people in this country. What’s peculiar is the categorization of black people as “black.”” (Thompson). Thus both David and Tamika intend to teach their respective children color as a natural phenomenon and not basis for differentiation. After analyzing both the essays, I feel “Coloring Lessons” is the stronger one in terms of style and content. In this essay, the content is closer to the topic of this paper. The content of the story is more explicit about a child’s confusion and dilemma regarding skin color of people. For David, the issue of cultural concern has already taken alarming shape as his 3-year-old son not only gets disturbed by so many “pink” people in a crowd, but also that he identifies people with their skin color. As can be seen towards the end of the essay, Wesley attracted his father’s attention to a ““brown boy” with a baseball hat” clearly indicating that more than the bat it was the boy’s skin color that made it easy for Wesley to describe the boy to his father. Even when David tried to teach him to identify the boy with the color of his hat or sweatshirt, Wesley adamantly sticks to his own perspective and firmly stated that the boy is brown. The style of writing is resonant with David’s concept about colors like black and white. He says that these colors are used too often in social context and hence should be abandoned while talking about skin color. This paper is about a parent’s dilemma in bringing up a child in a cultural challenging environment. The writing style of this story reflects the same as David’s problem is that white and black are treated as “polar opposites” by people which mean that white people and black people cannot sit in the same boat. However, in the case of Morgan, she was basically distinguishing the dolls with their hair color while his mother believed she was talking about skin color. David son’s Wesley was actually going through a phase of confusion when trying to distinguish different people by their skin color. The problem is more real in this case unlike Morgan who was actually talking about hair color contradictory to her mother’s concern. Therefore “Coloring Lessons” portrays the emotional state of a child who exemplifies the theme of this paper. From the above essays, I agree with the approaches of both David and Tamika. David’s essay has been more direct in this issue as his child’s innocence gets caught in the web of skin-color dilemmas. This problem cannot be avoided when a child finds himself amidst people from different ethnicities. The role of parents is extremely important in a person’s life. It is what a person learns in his growing years that stay with him throughout his life, although his perspective may get modified as he goes through the experiences of life. Wesley’s attitude of identifying people with their skin color is alarming, and David’s concern is genuine. This is because although for Wesley, skin color is merely a way of identification and not discrimination, it is his future approach towards the same that will decide if he will become a racist. Similarly, although Morgan has still not shown the signs of identification with skin color, it does not guarantee the same once she goes through life. References Thompson, Tamika, “Talking Race With a Toddler Who Wasn’t Talking About Race at All”, New York Times, December 6, 2013, October 31, 2014 from: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/talking-race-with-a-toddler-who-wasnt-talking-about-race-at-all/ Updike, David, “Coloring Lessons”, New York Times, July 31, 1994, October 31, 2014 Read More