Your Adorable Little Racist
We can't just look at this issue from a purely Dungeons and Dragons standpoint (unfortunately) and if we were to, we'd probably come to an early conclusion of "well, it used to be kind of racist, but it doesn't really seem to be anymore", which isn't really what we're after.
So, lets talk a bit about racism.
I started looking into racism, and what causes it, and while looking through the 10,000+ articles in the Nexis database, I got really really really bored (or overwhelmed?) and decided to play with Google. Google brought me to a lovely little article entitled Tolerant Tykes: Small Children Aren't Inherently Racist, which is about a study done by Tara Mandalaywala about race in early childhood. The main goal of her study was to examine three main questions: "(a) To what extent do young children hold essentialist views of race; (b) how do these beliefs develop; and (c) what are the implications of such essentialist beliefs for the early development of racial attitudes?" (Mandalaywala, para 3)
Mandalaywala's research is very dry and scientific, and personally I hate those kinds of papers, but it is very informative. Through her research, conducted at the Children's Museum of Manhattan, she talked to 203 children of different races, and 430 adults, giving them the same questions. these questions were based on a story (this child was born to these parents (A) and then adopted by these parents (B, usually of a different race), how do you feel that they will grow up? Will they look like A or B? Will they act like A or B? Et cetera...)
Now the problem with this study is that I took a few days to mull over the information (okay fine, maybe it was a week), and when I went back into it, it had refreshed and I lost my place because it was hoping I would spend 7 dollars for access (even though I had literally just had full access). So what I'm going to do is see how in the world to fix that problem.
I did however find this article's information pretty fantastic. We're seeing a trend toward more tolerance as younger generations take over, and as children learn their tolerance from their surroundings, it means that it will only grow exponentially.
So, lets talk a bit about racism.
I started looking into racism, and what causes it, and while looking through the 10,000+ articles in the Nexis database, I got really really really bored (or overwhelmed?) and decided to play with Google. Google brought me to a lovely little article entitled Tolerant Tykes: Small Children Aren't Inherently Racist, which is about a study done by Tara Mandalaywala about race in early childhood. The main goal of her study was to examine three main questions: "(a) To what extent do young children hold essentialist views of race; (b) how do these beliefs develop; and (c) what are the implications of such essentialist beliefs for the early development of racial attitudes?" (Mandalaywala, para 3)
Mandalaywala's research is very dry and scientific, and personally I hate those kinds of papers, but it is very informative. Through her research, conducted at the Children's Museum of Manhattan, she talked to 203 children of different races, and 430 adults, giving them the same questions. these questions were based on a story (this child was born to these parents (A) and then adopted by these parents (B, usually of a different race), how do you feel that they will grow up? Will they look like A or B? Will they act like A or B? Et cetera...)
Now the problem with this study is that I took a few days to mull over the information (okay fine, maybe it was a week), and when I went back into it, it had refreshed and I lost my place because it was hoping I would spend 7 dollars for access (even though I had literally just had full access). So what I'm going to do is see how in the world to fix that problem.
I did however find this article's information pretty fantastic. We're seeing a trend toward more tolerance as younger generations take over, and as children learn their tolerance from their surroundings, it means that it will only grow exponentially.
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