Before I was born, when my brother was little, he was taken care of by a family friend of ours. She had her own children, not to mention the neighbors who were always over. One time, when my dad went to pick up my brother, he confused one of the neighbors. The neighbor, a little girl, saw my dad holding my brother and noticed how the two of them don't resemble each other. (Which makes sense because my dad is full-blooded American and my brother is half Chinese half American)
"Are you Chinese?" she asked my dad.
"No," he responded.
Perplexed she tried another question, "Are you Greek?"
Once again my dad answered, "No."
Unable to come up with anything else she asks, "Then, what are you?"
Due to her limited exposure to her Greek family and her Chinese neighbors, she held a paradigm that everyone in the world was either Chinese or Greek. Through her experience with my father, she learned that there are other ethnicities exist, and she added that to her knowledge. Now she knows that there are people in the world who are neither Chinese nor Greek.
An adult thought this?? Certainly an example of a paradigm shift for her, in that case.
ReplyDeleteI would think that she knows that other ethnicities besides Greek and Chinese exist, but was maybe just struggling with pinpointing what your father was (??) It would be interesting to know what this woman was actually thinking.