Child’s Play: Discrimination

Discrimination is ugly, damaging, and not dead yet. When Elle and I sat down to do a video this weekend, I was planning on guiding the conversation toward a discussion of “turning a weakness into a strength.” Instead, I got this:

(BTW, need help talking with your child about discrimination? This booklet has a lot of great information in it. The examples are relevant to where it’s written, but you can substitute just about any -ism and the concepts will still work.)

Now, more power to Elle for being able to blow this other girl off and recognize that there’s nothing Elle can do to change this girl’s behavior. That’s not easy for most people to do, and we could all learn a thing or two by watching this girl’s reaction to someone else’s small-mindedness.

I know adults like to think that the grown-up world is automatically more difficult than a child’s, and it can certainly seem that way, for instance if the discriminator is a boss, but I don’t want to underestimate the challenges of a kid’s universe. In the grown up world, the risks may be higher, but the options for resolution are greater, too. Grown-ups can quit a job, form new social circles, or protect a job through work quality. Kids don’t have these options. At school, there is no place to hide from discrimination when you’re the target end of it: you can’t quit, you can’t make different friends (at least not easily), and the discriminator doesn’t care about your talents. That lunch hour can be a looooonnnnggg time when someone has you in his/her sights and you find yourself with no place to hide.

But you know what’s really dangerous—when the grown-up world truly is a more explosive place than a child’s?

It’s when grown-ups take their world, with all the safety valves and options that are buried in its complexity, and reduce it all down to the simplicity of a elementary school lunch room. When grown ups do that, they don’t eliminate their judgments, they don’t eliminate their ability to cause pain, they don’t even eliminate their desire to judge or cause pain. Usually, when gets lost in the reduction are the opportunities for working through those judgments in any sort of healthy way. That’s dangerous.

Despite the dangers, we see this behavior in the world around us with far too much frequency. Look at the politics of the Teapartistas, for instance: by simplifying Obama to a caricature of a socialist, they actually create discrimination: Obama could wake up tomorrow, shut down health care reform, and they’d still have to hate him. Not because of what he does, but because of who he is. Judging people because of who they are as opposed to what they do is incredibly dangerous; people are notoriously poor judges of character. So be careful, America. Ideologues are bad, but ideologues whose power is based on discrimination are worse. Let’s not be in such a hurry to take Obama down that we give rise to a second McCarthy.

It takes a pretty strong soul to avoid discrimination. It takes an even stronger soul to remain open to reconciling with one who has shown discrimination.

Interestingly, when I look for role models in this area, I find mostly children. Remember Tiny Tim’s famous line in A Christmas Carol? “God bless us, every one,” he says. There he is, blessing Scrooge, the man who’s stinginess has kept him small and weak and sick his whole life. That’s the moment we discover the incredible strength of this kid’s soul, and it’s beautiful.

And in Willy Wonka, it’s Charlie who turns his back on the Wonka’s meanness—even after Grandpa Joe decides to sell out to Slugworth.

(You’re in good company, Elle.)

But here’s the thing: as much as I love my daughter, and am genuinely proud of her, I just don’t believe that you—a grown up—are not better than a seven year old.

So tell me… how do you rise above?

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.