(Not going to post it here, and this thread is not an invitation to post all the racist schoolyard chants you ever learned, so please don't.)

My question is: where do (white) kids learn these songs that have endured for generations and over a wide geographical area? That's an American blog, and I've lived only in Ontario, so that's what I'd consider a "universal" chant that kids learn all over the US and Canada.

The reason I wonder this is because, as a parent, I would never teach such a song to my child. And I'm pretty sure my parents didn't teach it to me. I can't remember where I learned it - must have been from the other kids. But where did THEY learn it?

I mean, I didn't have particularly "anti-racist" parents. There were people in my family who did say racist things "as jokes", usually for shock value, etc. But I never learned stuff like that from them - I learned it from other kids. But where did THEY learn it? I can't imagine my friend's parents sitting down with them and saying, "Okay, time to learn a new song! It goes like this!" But I suppose it's possible.

So what would be the source of racist schoolyard chants that have endured for generations, for each generation of kids? Older kids to younger kids, for decades upon decades? Do kids still chant this stuff now? I've never heard my son sing that or any other racist chant that was common when I was a kid, and I would assume that if I haven't heard it then he doesn't know it - but I'm not naive enough to think that my son would say exactly the same things to me that he says when he's with just his friends, so maybe he does. Or maybe his school is so diverse that kids just don't learn or sing such chants there.

I was thinking about putting this in the anti-racism forum but I wasn't sure whether it fits there. I'm fine with it being moved if appropriate.

[ 14 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
My question is: where do (white) kids learn these songs

The reason I wonder this is because, as a parent, I would never teach such a song to my child. chelle

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from parents, relatives, neighbours and grandparents

I was born in England. There were many "jokes" about the French, Germans, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, Polish, "Arabs", Jews and people of colour.

My mom told me that "black kids are cute", and she made it clear that that was the only redeeming quality of "black people".

Things didn't really change much when I moved to Canada; now there were jokes about those same groups plus, Korean, Japanese, and First Nations, Quebecois and homosexuals.

I am not going to post the limericks that I learned as a child. (those favourite limericks on the playground were virtually all racist, sexist, homophobic, and abilist)

Kids are nasty, because their parents are nasty. My son had a boy in his class that said many bigoted things about people of colour, their religion, and people with disabilities. His parents are real charmers as well; they are my neighbors.

I still carry prejudices to this day, that I recognise or other people recognize in me; I am working at improving myself all the time, still educating myself.

Also, we don't recognise a lof of hate and prejudice in children, because parents and adults in general isolate themselves. There are two worlds: adult and child. Adults socialise with adults and kids spend more time with their peers than with adults. Kids are taught they shouldn't be openly racist, especially in mixed company, but that goes out the window when playing with your peers.

Adults act shocked when a group of 14 boys are charged with assaulting 8 children in St. Albert.

Adults are shocked and in denial when their boys beat a homeless man in Calgary and they video record it.

Adults are shocked when their girls murder a marginalised girl in Vancouver.

Very few kids engage in the most heinous of behaviours, but quite a few do participate in perpetuating hate, and participate in bullying.

Add to that the fact that world leaders, like George Bush, verbalise dichotomies on CNN and Fox News (us vs them), which can be accessed on the Internet 24/7, or they see the Spanish basketball team pose for a picture, and this reinforces prejudice and hate they may already have internalised.

[ 15 August 2008: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

The class was getting a bit out of hand, and the teacher, in a moment of great exasperation, said something more or less like this(I can't remember the exact words, but these are close)

"You kids are acting like kids in a Chinese school. Do you KNOW what a Chinese school class is like? Everyone talks at the same time and the teacher can't teach anything".

It shut us up. And it wasn't 'til years later that that moment passed through my mind again(this was also years ago)and I remember thinking "where the hell did she get THAT?"

So sometimes we're taught those things by the ones who should most be expected to know better.

[ 15 August 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

I've heard that phrase several times on school yards. I then get a clarification that someone had meant to say, "Happy."

I would also suggest that the fact that (white) parents NEVER talk to their kids about racism is a very good way to ensure that school yard chants grow into teenage violence and grown-up apartheid.

Most parents are more afraid to talk about race than sex with their kids and thus help to produce little racists. I have seen many examples of kids who point out race in public only to be hushed by their white parents - "shhh... that's not nice".

ETA: And I got in a fight with a friend who was angry at me for saying "fuck" in front of her three year old after which she used the word "gay" as a pejorative - thus the fight.

[ 16 August 2008: Message edited by: Le Téléspectateur ]

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Originally posted by Le Téléspectateur:
I think that there might be some inter-generational playground stuff going on with the chants, songs, skips and taunts. Which would add to the mountains of data that suggest that schools teach us to be more divided, intolerant and hateful.

[ 16 August 2008: Message edited by: Le Téléspectateur ]

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Nonsense.

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Schools is the only place, in many cases, where racist/sexist/classist/homophobic rhetoric even has the potential to be critisized. Public schools are where we have to show up and work through our differences and learn to "play nice" with each other, even if everything our parents or other influences has taught us that WE can't interact with THEM.

I shudder for Canada if it were not for our incredible system of public education which has MASSIVE problems, but, together with public health care, comprises one of the greatest accomplishments any society has accomplished. Ever.

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Wow this is the most naive view of schooling that I've seen in a while. Are you seriously arguing that schools teach us to get along? When was the last time you were in a school? The school experience that you are describing is not one that I recognize and is not one that a lot of people recognize.

Schools have erased the history of this land in the minds of settlers helping to perpetuate colonialism.

Schools stream poor and working-class people out of higher education.

Schools teach kids to obey authority - i.e. "you must get along!".

Le tele, you seem like an earnest enough sort. I'm sure you mean well. But you set impossibly high standards for social institutions and when they can't meet that standard you discard the whole project.

Of course public schools conform to the broad ideological perameters of the society in which they exist. They socialize children into the world that exists. You're not alone in think public schools are dangerously indoctrinating our youth - the Christian Right would tell you they have been coopted by Feminism and the Gay Agenda.

I suppose we could change that. Do away with public education and let every ideological persuasion establish their own educational institutions and prepare little ideologues to do battle with one another.