Parents: Do you strongly encourage your kids to make friends with people of a different race? (teens, babies)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My child played with whomever he wanted to play with. Sorry, I was too busy corralling kids most of the time to take a head count of who was black, white, latino, rich poor or middle class. All I saw was kids and lots of laughter.
I never once encouraged or discouraged him from anyone.
He is still friends with most of these kids. And even tho he's now 30 and lives in Seattle, his friends stop in and check on me from time to time.
And I grew up in all white rural Illinois, if you need to know my background.
Do you strongly encourage your kids to make friends with people of a different race? Do you think that is the role of a parent in today's world? Your thoughts.
No, my children choose their own friends. I don't need to socially engineer their lives.
Most posters insist that they don't tell their kids who to be friends with but also insist that their kids make lots of friends with children who are not the same race as them. Good for your kids but they are not the norm. People stick with their own kind in my experience. Maybe some pressure by parents would open them up to making friends who don't share their race, color or culture.
I think, once you get past age ten, you can't tell your kids with whom they should be friends. To assume so is to be incredibly naive about how kids think and to be pushy at the same time. Rather than indulge in some utopian scheme dreamt up by folk singers, all you can do is encourage them to seek out friends from all walks of life. And that begins with being open-minded yourself. If all your friends look like you, think like you, and act like you, then your kids will have a pretty homogenous set of friends, too.
Hence my user name, when white people say they are looking to live in a town with "Good Schools" that pretty much translates to they are looking to live away from undesirable minorities.
Allow me to roll my eyes at that bit of tongue-clucking, self-aggrandizing piety.
Now that I've gotten THAT out of the way, I live in a city where a lot of the "Good Schools" enjoy a good bit of diversity. While our school is heavily white, my kids go to school with blacks, asians, latinos, Jews, Muslims, and latinos. I'm pretty sure there are some Mennonites in there somewhere, too. My daughter's 'bestie' is Jewish, the girl she drives to school every day is black, and one of her other best friends is a shador-wearing Muslim. Heck, her 18th birthday party was last weekend looked like the freaking junior United Nations was hanging out in our basement and backyard.
While what you're describing might have been true in the 60s or 70s, most people today really don't give a rip about the ethnic makeup of the schools as long as 1) academic achievement is high and 2) crime is low. Heck, we've talked to plenty of black parents who bolted from the inner city so their kids could get a good education, too. Were they fleeing from undesirable minorities, too, or simply fleeing from undesirable schools?
Most posters insist that they don't tell their kids who to be friends with but also insist that their kids make lots of friends with children who are not the same race as them. Good for your kids but they are not the norm. People stick with their own kind in my experience. Maybe some pressure by parents would open them up to making friends who don't share their race, color or culture.
Maybe you should consider moving away from an area that doesn't provide the diversity and acceptance you would like, a place where "the norm" isn't what you experience now.
Most posters insist that they don't tell their kids who to be friends with but also insist that their kids make lots of friends with children who are not the same race as them. Good for your kids but they are not the norm. People stick with their own kind in my experience. Maybe some pressure by parents would open them up to making friends who don't share their race, color or culture.
Do you even have kids? Or, more to the point, do you have kids over the age of ten? The more you push them to make friends with anyone, the more they resist -- no matter what ethnicity the other kid might be.
Hell, if my next door neighbor had The Coolest Kid In The Universe, a boy who cracked jokes with the best of them, played sports, played the guitar like Jimi Hendrix, was nice to everybody he met, read interesting books, and was kind and generous, it wouldn't matter. The moment I suggest to my 14-year-old that maybe he could go hang with the boy, he would look at me like, "Are you kidding me?"
If there's one thing a kid hates, it's a parent who meddles in his/her social life. Trust me on this. Singing 'Kumbaya' and attempting social engineering never works.
Hence my user name, when white people say they are looking to live in a town with "Good Schools" that pretty much translates to they are looking to live away from undesirable minorities.
How do we subtract REP Points from someone. NO offense. Really. But this may be the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on these forums.
Quote:
My kids who are mixed white and spanish ARE the diversity most whites avoid at all costs.
MOST Whites? Seriously? Where do you live? A town of 200 in Nowheresville, Mississippi?
How do we subtract REP Points from someone. NO offense. Really. But this may be the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on these forums.
MOST Whites? Seriously? Where do you live? A town of 200 in Nowheresville, Mississippi?
Shoot. Southern schools tend to have a lot more diversity than schools elsewhere. I'm always amused when someone from a state with a tiny minority population wants to lecture Southerners on diversity. Shoot, on my last business trip to Wisconsin, I never saw a minority of any description after I left the airport.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
MOST Whites? Seriously? Where do you live? A town of 200 in Nowheresville, Mississippi?
