Why is diversity in fiction important? Because diversity in life is important. And when we exclude—intentionally or otherwise—characters of color from our work, we do send a billboard message to readers. We tell them that people of color aren’t there, aren’t important, aren’t worthy of our stories. That they don’t deserve to be part of the conversation of our books. That reading isn’t for them. That they don’t matter. That they don’t even register on our radar.
I adore teenagers. That’s why I write for them. They’re special and magical and full of life; they’re truly the best of us. As young adult authors, our words have power. The power to entertain. The power to inform. The power to inspire. And most importantly, the power to change the lives of teen readers—to really make a difference. If, as Truby believes, stories express the idea that human beings can become better versions of ourselves, then I want to show YA readers that those better versions look like them, too.
All of them.
"
— Sarah Ockler talks to white authors about what doesn’t count as diversifying fiction, why certain fears hold some people back, and responsibility (via richincolor)
The classic doll color test performed with a white child, complete with the parent’s excuses reactions
The little girl even says she picked the white figures as the good child because it “looks like me” and the dark girl as bad because “she’s dark”. When Soledad O’Brien asks the girl’s mother about it, we’re met with quite a few colorblind based excuses and “well, we just don’t talk about race”.
“We don’t talk about race!!”
And your kid is saying racist shit regardless.
That should fucking tell you something, lady.
But of course, it won’t. I bet you cash money she won’t change a thing, continuing to use that color blind bullshit.
This is why the whole idea of not discussing race with white children is bullshit. No, it won’t “taint” them. When you don’t talk about it, they still form opinions — racist ones — because they don’t know any better, so to speak. Then one day they grow up into adults that are, guess what, still racist. As Black folks, we pretty much all had “the talk” as kids/young people; our existence in this society dictates that we do, because racism is a part of our lives at an incredibly young age. Colorblind ideology has been proven to be toxic as blatant racism. And little white kids can be just as racist as their parents.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOP..!!
we dont talk about race with kids but a small child ran up to my professor’s wife and said she had a terrorist baby.
we dont talk about race with kids but white children were encouraged to go to lynchings to see white supremacy. because (trigger warning: graphic details) jesse washington, whose charred body is floating around on tumblr posts, had his teeth yanked out by white children so they could sell them as lynching souvenirs.
we dont talk about race with kids but kids clearly PICK UP ON RACE. many POC parents dont explicitly discuss race but clearly, white ppl, kids pick up on it!!
The video above is no longer available, but judging from the image this should be the same footage.
Just a quick note: The original video is actually still up and working just fine, but because it’s CNN there may be international restrictions or some sort of Adblock detection bc I’ve seen only a few other people say it’s not working for them.
Either way I’m glad you were able to find it!
Actually this has little to do with racism. What you are listening to is evolutionary psychology at work here, and something like this was repeated on 9 month olds and 14 month olds. In general, and without parental prompting, small children prefers those who are similar to them and dislike those who are disimilar to them. Also they prefer those who help those who are similar to them and dislike those who are helpful to those who are disimilar to them.
This makes sense in terms of evolution. Children wanted to be able to identify those who were similar to them since it most likely signaled someone who would protect them from harm.
Now what does this test mean? What this test really is measuring here, if it is measuring racism at all, is a child’s implicit racism. IMPLICIt. This is what they exude naturally and they are not trying to be racist. Even adults who think they aren’t racist have levels of implicit racism that can be brought forward with the correct stimuli.
So instead of viewing it as the parent’s fault for not explicitly teaching the child that racism is wrong, you can also look at it as either evolutionary forces at work OR implicit racism. She could, for all you know, love playing with the little black girl at her school but only made this choice since she had to thus measuring implicit racism.
That isn’t true at all..lol this is directly about racism, they’ve been doing this test repeatedly for decades and Black children always pick the white image / doll for all of the positive traits. They did this test on all only Black children (the link is on this blog…) decades ago and they ALL picked the white doll for the positive traits. Someone did it again recently with a doll with straight hair vs. afro hair and all the Black kids (that have afro hair obviously) ALL picked the one with straight hair for the positive attributes because they could most closely associate it with being white or mixed even though all of them were Black and brown skinned….
Don’t try to pull that bullshit on this post thinking you have an understanding out pea brains can’t reach when you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about and all of us are very fucking familiar with this experiment.
lmao they have vegan in their URL *and* they brought up evo psych so it’s unsurprising that they’re a piece of shit racism apologist
If you haven’t heard this yet today, you’re beautiful. I’m glad you’re alive. Please don’t stop fighting. You are strong enough, I believe in you. I love you.
