Just reached the end of my 439 item checklist in preparation for the records audit/facility inspection I'm fairly certain will happen this week.
Some of those 439 things I should probably do anyway but wouldn't if there wasn't an inspector breathing down my neck (vacuuming the coils on the back of my refrigerator), and some things I only do for the sake of the inspection (throw away the peachy-pale crayons that say "flesh colored").
Some of those 439 things are lawsuits waiting to happen. Imagine this. You adopt two children. One from China, and one who is part American Indian. When you enroll them in my childcare, the government asks that you disclose the race of your children. You don't have to tell me if they have any diseases, like, say, AIDS. But we do have to mark the boxes and plug the little dears into the correct racial category.
Next, we will need to come up with an appropriate curriculum plan for your American Indian child to address his special social and cultural needs. We will have to agree on an appropriate way to point out to this child that he is not like the other children–not like anyone else in his family, even–and because he is different, he will need to read this stack of books and do these puzzles and learn to sing these songs. We will need to come up with culturally specific "resources and a training plan" for him.
Even if he's nine months old.
You can't begin too early.
Everyone else? The Mexicans and the Africans and the Asians?
Have a couple dolls with darker skin and a frog that sings the alphabet in Spanish and put them where everyone can reach them. They'll adapt.
True story.
In America, in 2010.
February 8th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
G used the peachy-pale "flesh colored" crayon for Martin Luther King Jr. in school. She didn't get the memo.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:30 am
how sad….how incredibly sad. Tokenism and exclusion is alive and well.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I can't imagine this is what the American Indian Culture means when they say they want equal rights. Hmmm. Interesting.