In my community - and I bet we are not alone - racism is a significant problem. And I believe that racism, and discrimination of many types, start long before our kids start kindergarten. It begins when we parents talk about "them" in front of our children, whoever "they" may be (blacks, whites, Catholics, Jews, men, women, teenagers, etc). Kids overhear casual conversations we have with our spouses, our neighbors or our friends; our children may not comment on it, may not even seem to hear us saying, "Men never ask for directions" or "All those people across the river sit at home living off welfare, while the rest of us have to work!" or "All those people across town won't even give us a chance to show them how hard we can work!"
We may think that by "warning" our daughters that they have to work twice as hard as a man to succeed in business, or by warning our Mexican-American children that people will treat them badly if they speak with an accent, etc., that we are preparing them for life. My thought is this: are we not simply teaching them prejudice and to presume that others are going to treat them unfairly for things they cannot change?
If I warn my daughter that she will be harassed by men, she will grow up to distrust men. If you tell your Black child that whites hate them, they will grow to mistrust whites. Such "warnings" are unhealthy, and untrue.
I teach my children that some people will not like them. But I don't tell my daughter that men will prevent her from getting deserved promotions. Instead, I teach her that some people are ignorant and do interfere with others' attempts at success. If a male student calls her dumb, I don't get into a discussion about sexism; I suggest that maybe he has low self-esteem, maybe he feels threatened by her, maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe he's just a jerk.
