english homework

The Newsweek article "See Baby Discriminate" brings up a number of issues related to the discovery and recognition of ethnic identity by children who have not yet formed (or can not yet form) conclusions about race and racial identity.

University of Colorado professor Phyllis Katz mentions that at ages 5 and 6, children are actually beginning to form their own conclusions about race and ethnicity. However, this is exactly the time when many parents believe that it is important NOT to introduce or to bring up the subject.


PROMPT A---

Paragraph 1: Agree or disagree with Katz by providing details about your own personal experience being introduced to the fact that there are "people with different colored skin" or "different races" or "different kinds of people". You must try to remember as far back as you can--when you first realized that people can be grouped into racial or ethnic categories...or even mixtures of those categories. Who told you? What did they tell you? What groups did they name specifically? What did they call those groups? Did they identify which group YOU belonged to?

Paragraph 2: Discuss your own ethnic identity and how that HAS or HAS NOT played a part in the close friendships you have developed until now. Did the neighborhood where you grew up influence what ethnic groups you were exposed to? Did the school(s) you attended present you with a LIMITED or a WIDE variety of ethnic diversity? 

Paragraph 3: If you were to have children of your own, when (if at all) do you think you might introduce the subject of racial and ethnic diversity to them? What would you say about the differences? Or would you leave it up to teachers to do that? How would you try to prevent your child(or children) from developing incorrect conclusions about ethnic groups that they do not belong to?