Teaching Children to Celebrate Diversity
During this time of heightened racial tension, I’ve had many questions from parents about how to teach young children to understand and appreciate the many different cultures, religions, customs, and people in our world.
Children are not born with biases or misconceptions about others. Children are born with curiosity about their world and acceptance of whatever they learn. Bias is something that is taught to young children through our actions, comments, and simply the way we live our lives. In most cases, it’s taught unintentionally, so it is really important that we are intentional about countering it. This begins by taking a good look at ourselves and examining our own implicit biases. Everyone has them. No matter what race, religion, gender, or ethnicity you are, if you have a brain, you have biases. Almost every aspect of raising children is influenced by our own belief systems. This is unavoidable. Children are incredibly intuitive, and they pick up on even the most subtle of our opinions and actions. This is why teaching children to celebrate all races, genders, and cultures has to be an intentional and deliberate act.
We can actually capitalize on how children learn about their world to intentionally teach them about the beauty of cultural diversity. Children learn by taking in and processing information through experiences. By seeing, touching, listening, and experiencing new concepts, children learn new information and form opinions about their world. Children then take this information and put it into categories. From as early as birth, children are experiencing and categorizing. They quickly learn that people are different from animals, food is different from toys, and that everything fits into some type of category. Children are also born with natural curiosity and wonder, and it’s important that we foster and encourage this to promote new learning. We can use this to instill an appreciation for cultural diversity.
Just as children learn that red, blue, and yellow fall into the category of colors, they learn that people fall into their own categories. If a white child only ever sees Black people separate from themselves—such as from afar or on TV—then they will put people of a different race into a separate category. Then, when they meet a Black person, they unintentionally place them into that category that is different from themselves—this begins the divide. It is important to begin having discussions with children from a young age about this topic. Talk with your children about how all people have both similarities and differences on the inside and the outside.
Think about the people and situations your child interacts with every day. Is there diversity? If not, how can you introduce more diversity into your child’s life so that they can become familiar with it, embrace it, celebrate it, and not fear it? Remember, we often fear what is unfamiliar.
Consider taking advantage of different cultural festivals in your area. See African dance shows, visit a Native American art exhibit, go to Latin American festivals, and eat the food of other cultures. Celebrate each culture and its people. Have discussions with young children about the differences in cultures, foods, and beliefs. Encourage questions, curiosity, and interest. Celebrate different cultural holidays and listen to different music. Learn together. Read books together. Try not to cook one ethnic meal and then return to “normal” the next night. This will just make the meal feel even more distinct and foreign. Instead, make diversity part of your typical routine, even if you just point out something like, “Spaghetti comes from Italy, spring rolls come from Asia.” Use this to spark discussion.
Remind children that people are a category, just as colors are a category. All colors fall into the “color” category, just as all people fall into the “people” category. Children don’t limit themselves to using only one color in their box of crayons, just as people don’t limit their interactions to only one person. Without red and blue, we would not have purple, and without differences between people, we would not have beautiful diversity.
By Aimee Ketchum
