Of soap, suffrage, and slavery
Given the following questions Edith has posed to me in the last 72 hours, guess which one I need help answering.
(a) Tell me about when women couldn't vote.
(b) What's the Underground Railroad?
(c) Why do bubbles pop?
I swear I didn't prime her to ask about American history--at least, not intentionally. I was just singing the regular smorgasboard of bedtime songs, taken from my summer camp days, Americana, the hymn book, Glee Club, children's tunes, Broadway, and any other source that comes to mind. And the other night the two songs she wanted to know more about were about Seneca Falls and Harriet Tubman. Maybe it's in the genes.
I think I did passably trying to explain both, though there's no doubt which is harder. On suffrage, I explained that there was a time in this country long ago when only men were allowed to vote, not women (and it does feel longer ago than it once did, when you now have to tell a kid that it was before her great-grandparents were born). Then I explained that there were women--and men--who thought this law was unfair and worked to have it changed. And we talked about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Seneca Falls conference in 1848, since they are the subject of the song, and then the next wave of suffrage activity a generation later.
Edith asked to hear this story three times in a row. The third time, I decided to draw a parallel and suggested that it would be as if at her school, there was a rule that only the boys were allowed to go out on the playground every day and never the girls, and the teachers didn't do anything about it.
"And then when the boys went outside, I would get all the girls together, and say, 'Hey, girls, let's change this rule so girls can go out on the playground, too!'" Edith announced.
She got it.
Slavery prompts a greater range of challenges. My elementary school started teaching us about slavery from the get-go, which in that school system was at age 4, so I don't think she's necessarily too young to know if she's asking questions. But there are clearly difficulties. Never mind the fact that you don't want to detail the worst of the physical atrocities to a three year old--that goes without saying. But if you offer an explanation at the most basic level, it's rather hard to make a preschooler appreciate the significance of working for nothing when she doesn't yet understand what money is for in the first place, never mind that adults expect to work in exchange for it. And trying to explain to a young child what is horrible about having no freedom of choice about where you will live, or how, but to be forever at someone else's mercy--well, you realize as you watch her blank expression that that's her reality.
I also chose not to explain American slavery in racial terms at this point. It's not that I want to whitewash racism for my children; when the time comes, I want them to be fully conscious of it and absolutely self-aware about their place in a racially constructed society in which they are granted certain privileges simply by virtue of their skin color...including the privilege of not being forced to think about themselves in racial terms every day.
But I'm not sure it's time. Edith is obviously gender conscious at this point, but I don't know that she's yet race conscious. I've never heard her say anything that suggests she is. Unlike sex, of course, we have to be taught to see race, a social construct, according to the terms set by our particular society. (Or as Rodgers and Hammerstein put it, "You have to be taught to be afraid...." The lyrics made little sense to me when I was young, just as I suspect the idea behind them might make little sense to Edith right now.) There are people of a full range of skin colors and various ethnicities at her school, and I don't think she sees them in racial categories yet.
I have no doubt she will learn to see race soon enough. Before then, I'd rather she spend as much time as possible exposed to people of different skin colors and backgrounds, becoming friends with them without thinking of them in racial categories. Maybe, just maybe, it will help mitigate against the prejudices she will be taught all too soon.
Given those parameters, I framed slavery as a horrible system that existed in this country long ago, in which some people believed they could own and control other people--without trying define which people were which. The best I did at picture painting that she could understand, I think, was to explain that even slave children had to work and that they didn't have toys or get to go to school. I didn't mention children being sold away from their parents.
And then we talked about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, of the danger of flight and the bravery of people like Tubman and those on the Underground Railroad who helped. I'm mindful of the historian in our department with school-aged kids who recently observed that if you only learned about slavery from the New Jersey public schools, you'd get the idea that slaves were forever escaping to freedom. I don't want to give that impression either. But with a three year old, where else are you going to go with the story after the bare-bones basics of an essentially static and terrible state of affairs? We're not going to tackle the Civil War yet. Besides, the song that prompted the original question was about the Underground Railroad. So Underground Railroad it was.
Edith was of course a bit disappointed to discover it wasn't actually a railroad and it wasn't underground. But I think the story of the journey gripped her enough as it was. She has asked for the song no fewer than a dozen times this weekend. And she wants more songs about slavery. We've sung "Steal Away to Jesus" (not getting into the double entendre there). And we've talked about Moses and the Israelites and sung "Let My People Go." Any other suggestions?
It remains to be seen what she does with this new information about the world she lives in. From my vantage point, nothing has ever quite brought the visceral horror of the institution home to me as a white citizen of the 21st century as fully as trying to explain it to my child. Not all those years of books in English class, or readings and movies in history class, or school plays. Though I know parents of black children can recount stories of far greater agony at first telling their children about slavery (can anyone forget King's account of that moment with his children?), looking into Edith's innocent face as I tried to explain made it vivid how fragile we all are, how vulnerable every member of society is when atrocities are practiced against any part of the whole. At thirteen I was scared by the line in another camp song, that was more generally about injustice: "It could have been me, but instead it was you." Now it seems all too obviously true. There but for fortune...
Meanwhile, anyone who can explain why bubbles pop--or really, why they form in the first place--please do be in touch.
5 comments:
Bubbles are air surrounded by a film of water and soap. The water layer is between two thin layers of soap (the whole bubble is only a few millonths of an inch thick). Bubbles are round because that is the shape that causes the least stretching of the soap layer's molecules.
Bubbles pop primarily when they lose so much water that the water layer between the soap layer disintegrates at some point, breaking the surface tension of the bubble. The loss of water can be due to gravity, which pulls the water to the bottom of the bubble (meaning most bubbles pop from the top). It can also be due to contact with a dry surface, which absorbs some of the water and creates a hole in the water layer. That's why a bubble will sometimes last on a wet finger or on the wand in the bubble bottle, but quickly pop after landing on a dry wall. Strong breezes can also break the surface tension of the water layer in the bubble and lead to a bubble popping.
Battle Hymn of the Republic? I can't quite remember the words, but I remember liking the stirring rhythm as a kid.
Thanks for a beautiful post.
wow, GEB, I really liked this one. And also wanted to chime in to say that I work with a few people who are looking at the development, in childhood, of different kinds of biases (one of the labs I'm in studies bias, stereotyping, and social attitudes more generally), and you're right-- most 3-year-olds are not aware of race (this seems to be true not just of priviledged white kids, btw), though they're quite conscious of gender. And pointing it out to them, as you astutely intuited, only hastens the arrival of biases.
I'm learning so much from this blog! Why bubbles pop, how ironing gets out wrinkles... and, sorry to say, some bits about American history that were kind of fuzzy for me, too. :) Thanks to Edith for asking the questions, since it's far more legitimate for such questions to come from a 3-year-old! :)
Thanks for the professional background to confirm my haphazard parental guesswork, a.! That's really interesting stuff.
I keep thinking that if the first context in which a white kid is made conscious of race is one that has to do with discrimination versus privilege, how can that not subtly shape their attitudes, even if those injustices are being condemned. And I'm imagining what it will be like the first time Edith asks about race and I can say, "Yes, your friend/teacher X is black...like the President is black."
I'm also wondering how one can start deconstructing race with a little person right away, something no one ever tried do in all my years of race-conscious schooling (until I reached graduate school). How to confirm that this society sees race and makes many decisions based on it, then immediately turn around and say, actually, the President has a black father and a white mother, and so-and-so has parents from China and Scotland, and your own ancestors include slaves, and... What would it be like if kids were taught to destabilize the categories from the get-go?
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