Thank You!!

I hope that as I continue to work with children and families from diverse backgrounds that I can learn to respect all of their differences. I hope that learning more about their culture and backgrounds becomes a priority, and that I continue to help them feel apart of our program by making our documents in their language and helping them to feel comfortable at all our activities.

One goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity and social justice would be that every teacher learn about the issues and come to an understanding of how we make others feel when we have not had proper training.

I want to thank all my colleagues. This class has truly stretched us, we were able to open up about how we feel about issues without conflict or backlash and that shows that we are mature Walden Students. Thank you everyone, and hope to see you again in forthcoming classes.

The Personal Side of Bias, and Prejudice

One memory that I have of an incident of prejudice was at work. A co worker who is a well to do caucasion female  made the statement that she did not want to make a home visit to an African American family because of the area that they lived in. She believed that either her car would be stolen, or vandalized because of being in a black neighborhood.

I believe that it diminished equity because those parents that lived in areas that she felt were not of her standard, those parents were cheated out of their home visits because of her bias, and prejudice. These parents did not recieve the same amount of service as families she felt lived in better neighborhoods.

I felt, here we go another well to do caucasion not wanting to work with blacks because they are afraid of us!! They think(caucasions) all blacks are alike. All of us are violent, all of us live in terrible neighborhoods. I felt like she was just being ridiculous and if she did not want to work with different races of parents then why take the job.
The co worker would have to change her attitude and get over her fears in order for this incident to become an opportunity for greater equity.