November!

Day One of NaBloPoMo 

Miles's kindergarten class went on a field trip to the Mount Baker Theatre in town this week.  Several of the primary grades watched the "Imperial Acrobats Chi of Shaolin - Tale of the Dragon" which apparently is a story about an injured thief who is found by a monk and eventually healed and redeemed.  The story is told with dance, martial arts, and acrobatics.  When I went to pick him up after school, he was SO excited and said the show was "great!" 

In the car, I asked him about the Chinese acrobats:
Grace: "Were the acrobats Chinese?"
Miles: "What's Chinese?"
Grace (perplexed): "Um, did they look like me?"
Miles (in a "duh" tone): "No Mama they didn't look like you at all!  They looked like me and Daddy!" 

Hm.  One possible explanation is that I mostly describe myself (and my family) as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese.  And I didn't want to push the issue too much.  Another possibility is that he may not think about race in the way adults do.  But our mini-conversation led me re-read the work of Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, authors of Nurtureshock. 

Here's a link of an excellent discussion of race: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/09/11/is-discussing-race-with-a-3-year-old-too-young.html

This quote resonates with me: "According to Harris-Britt (a clinical psychologist who studies race), teaching a child about race shouldn't consist of acute exposure to race; comfort in racial differences comes through a calm, continuous process of exposure. And that should begin at the very beginning."

With that said, Bellingham is not a particularly diverse community.