The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The memory I have of an incident which prejudice was experienced was actually last week.  There is a commercial that shows children of different races describing to a Caucasian man how they would build things using candy.  At the moment I can’t remember exactly what the children mentioned, but for example one child may have said they would build a house using twizzlers, the door would be made using jelly beans, the roof would be made using peppermint, etc. The African American boy then asked what would the windows be made of, and the Caucasian man said very frankly, “I’m assuming they would be made of candy”. My son actually thought this was a racist incident because he stated the man could have given an example of the type of candy that could be used in making the windows rather than make the comment he made. My remark to my son was that although I understood how he felt, it was already understood that everything would be made of candy so the little boy probably shouldn’t have asked the question.  My son said well that’s true too but the fact remains that the African American boy was made to look like a fool……my son asked why couldn’t one of the other children asked that question?  He said every time there is something silly or dumb to be said on many commercials, it’s more than likely the African American people who say it. Equity was diminished because in my son’s opinion the other children were allowed to use their imagination and be creative, but all the African American boy did was look as though he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation and therefore asked a silly question. The feeling  brought to me was the fact that my child pays more attention to equity issues than I imagined. What would have to change to turn this incident around would have to be the way people look at things. People would have to be more open minded and look at things from different perspectives.  My son saw the boy being made to look silly. I saw the question he asked having two answers (he could have been given examples of candy or he could have been answered exactly how the man answered him).