A lot of people are sort of afraid to talk about race in their classroom. They might talk about other countries, and try food from their classmates' homeland, but they rarely ever talk about what it's like not to be like most of the other kids in the class.
- Do you remember ever talking about what it's like to be different in class?
- If you are a teacher, what have you done to help students respect each other, even if they are of different races or cultures?
- As a parent, do you want your child to have friends who are of different races or cultures?
- Do you think it is a good idea to think about each other's race, or is it best to ignore it?
- Do you mostly just accept everyone in your class, no matter what their background or race is?
- Do you visit the homes of classmates from other cultures or race?
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When we think about it no one of us is like the others. We are all different in some way but we are more alike some people than others. I believe that culture difference is somewhat of more importance than differences in the color of our skin at least in Denmark where I live. We have quite a few refugees from the former Yugoslavia and they more or less look like we do except from having darker hair but many of them are Muslims and have a completely different culture which makes it difficult for their children to adjust to the Danish School. I remember one of these children talk about what it is like not to celebrate the Christian mark days like everybody else, how it is like to bring food to school that is completely different from the other children’s food and so on. Being different from the majority is never easy whether you differ in skin color, religion, culture of sexuality. One of my friends is adopted and she told me, that it was a relief for her when she as a grown up joined a group of Asian adopted. It was nice for her to look at faces similar to the face she looked at when she looked in the mirror. Another friend of mine is a homosexual male teacher and he have told me about how it is like to be different and how nice it was when he finally dared to go public with his sexuality. He also told me that many of his students afterwards have come to him and told him that it was a great help for them to realize that they were guy and that he had helped them to go public about it because they realized that you could have an almost ordinary and good life being guy. I believe that we shall not talk about differences all the time but we should talk about them when it is appropriate in stead of ignoring them.
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