Maybe I’ll find some action at Kamath Circle. There are a lot of students hanging around at KC. I slow down my pace. I make sure my t-shirt is straight and all the Winnie the Pooh coffee latte shirt moreover I love this printing is visible. I look around and randomly smile at people! No smiles were returned. There was an incredible study done of kids and colored T-shirts. Without talking about the meaning of the color of the T-shirts, kids independently concluded that the kids with the same color T-shirt were “nicer” than the kids with the different colored shirts. It’s worth mentioning that babies and children are also incredible statisticians. This is well documented in the work of Alison Gopnik’s lab and others.[3] Hence, if you don’t talk to your kids about race, they may reach their own conclusions based on observations of people and different races that they see around them. Are there more people of a particular race who are poor in your city? What conclusions are your children likely to draw from that observation? If you don’t talk to your kids about race, but rather expect them to be colorblind because you have never discussed race with them, you are allowing them to make their own conclusions. Based on their own observations and a natural tendency to discriminate, they may end up learning a lesson that is not what you intended. Geeks love humourous t-shirts, especially if the slogan pokes fun at other non-geeks.
Comments