Start Seeing Diversity Blog. "We Don't say those words in class.

An incident comes to my mind is when a young white child who was shopping with his parents came up to me, and he started a conversation. He was asking me why I had this display table in this retail store. Why were people putting money in the basket on the table? His mother and father were standing a few feet apart looking at clothing. While we continued to talk he came around the table to stand next to me, and we continued the conversation. However, the next question he asked changed our conversation.

He put his hand right next to mine, and he asked my why my hand was darker than his? I turned to look at his parents to see if they were going to answer the question. Their reaction were priceless. They both looked at me and their child with shock and embarrassment. The farther walked away from the clothing rack, and he did not look back, and his mother turned around and begin to continue looking at the clothing like nothing had happen. I answered him by talking about God. You know how God made animals to be different, and he said yes. I told him that God made people with different skin colors. Even though our skin colors are different, we should still get to know people. It is not the skin color that will decide if we are going to become friends with that person, but it is their words and actions.

He looked at me and, we continued our conversation, and then he said goodbye, and he walked over to his mother, and they left the store. An Anti-Bias educator would have asked the child why he asked that question. In the Laureate Education Video one of the teachers asked a young girl why she did not want to play with the brown doll and she quoted "because the brown doll was dirty." (Laureate Education, 2010) The teacher set up a time to wash all of the dolls, and the student begin to play with the dolls because it was now clean. Early Childhood Educators should show people of color in pictures as doctors, lawyers, nurses, policemen and executives in businesses. Some television shows, books, and photographs still portray people of color in stereotypes roles as criminals.

In Africa, people people live in cities and rural areas and not just the jungles. Anti-Bias educators must include photographs, books, and start conversations to help children unlearn their biases toward their peers. Instead of asking children questions of characters that they have seen on television, children should be shown images of people during the same things because images can help children depict stereotypes which will help children unlearn stereotypes about people.