Tatum Quote Annotate

(2.) The impact of racism begins early. Even in our preschool years, we are exposed to misinformation[3] about people different from ourselves. Many of us grew up in neighborhoods where we had limited opportunities to interact with people different from our own families. When I ask my students, “How many of you grew up in neighborhoods where most of the people were from the same racial group as your own?” almost every hand goes up. There is still a great deal of social segregation in our communities. Consequently, most of the early information we receive about “others”—people racially, religiously, or economically different from ourselves—does not come as the result of firsthand experience. The secondhand information we do receive has often been distorted, shaped by cultural stereotypes, and left incomplete.

I chose this paragraph because this paragraph is about how kids learn about stereotypes and racist comments and habits at a very young age. I agree with this because most of us grew up in neighborhood with people from the same race as us, which gives us very little information about the different races outside of ours. When I was little, the only people different from our race were tourist from different countries. The whole school and the neighborhood were one race. Many people want to be around people of their "kind". Most of the things they assume about the different race come from books or older people, like your parents or someone you look up to.