By Naomi Schaefer Riley
May 24, 2015 | 6:00am
“Can racism be stopped in the third grade?”
That’s the question asked in this week’s New York Magazine cover story by journalist Lisa Miller. The short answer, of course, is that it all depends on how you define racism.
At the Fieldston Lower School, a $43,000-per-year Riverdale institution, the administration sees racism everywhere. Just consider the “microaggressions” that have been uncovered.
According to the piece: “A girl puts her hands in another girl’s hair; a boy asks his Asian friend where he’s really from. A number of years ago, a white student in a fourth-grade biography unit delivered a presentation on Jackie Robinson while in blackface.”
Here’s a news flash, folks: This is not racism. It’s children being curious about the way their friends look and trying their best to look like an American hero.
If you want it to stop, you can tell them that it’s not appropriate to touch other people without their permission, that many people who look different were born in this country. and that if you’re going to dress up as someone else, you don’t have to change the color of your skin.
You want to know what real racism looks like? Try this. In response to these incidents, as well as a whole bunch of multi-culti-educational mumbo-jumbo, Fieldston has decided to institute a policy of … segregation. Yes, that’s right. We have finally come full circle.
