There is an interesting, if somewhat stylistically repetitive, article by
Mica Pollock, a student of Ray McDermott's, in the current Ed Researcher
(and possibly online at aera.net) that discusses the double bind of talking
about people and social facts in racial terms or not doing so ... and
includes a discussion of this dilemma for researchers's talk/writing as
well as for teachers, citizens, policy leaders, etc. Worth a look. JAY.
At 03:33 PM 1/8/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Mike wrote:
> >>Resarch by Hirschfeld on little kids notions of social categories
>points toward a very early, perhaps domain specific notion that
>corresponds to "race" such that little kids will identify someone as
>"black">>
>
>It is very likely that what is referred to as 'kids' by Hirschfeld are kids
>raised in specific contexts of cultures where race is being used as a
>socially significant label. I can attest that kids raised in cultures where
>such labels are not systematically used in everyday life are not sensitive
>to any 'color-related' distinctions even at the age of 6 (my own personal
>but very participatory and longitudinal observation). It takes several years
>of being exposed to the culture where race is salient for a child to start
>paying any attention to 'colour'. At least during a whole first year of
>being in a classroom with kids of a very diverse racial background, this
>child has been systematically referring to her classmates in any terms BUT
>the racial ones (when asked who the classmates are, the child would describe
>them in terms of gender, friendliness, in terms of what they wear and how
>long their hair is etc. etc but never as 'black' and 'white').
>
>Not surprizing at all in view of the CHAT perspective, I would think.
>
>Anna Stetsenko
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
---------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 01 2002 - 01:00:07 PST