Learning War/Learning Race

Abstract

The tragedy of September 11th produced immense controversy and re-ignited simmering culture wars in the media over the presentation of these events in American schools, or what students should know. The ethnographic research conducted with fourth-grade students in a public school in Brooklyn, New York, side-stepped this debate in order to contribute to it. Specifically, the goal was to capture what children do in fact know through an investigation of their modes of speaking and writing about these events. What figured most prominently in the students’ talk and writing was their racialization of a far-away and ill-defined enemy. By showing how this racialization was also evident in the students’ interactions and friendship, and contextualizing these patterns in the racial (dis)order of the United States, I suggest that the events of September 11th and the war on terrorism have produced a culture of fear that will have lasting, if as yet unintelligible, effects on the racial dynamics of the United States.

Consequences of 9/11 and the war on terror on children’s and young adult’s mental health: A systematic review of the past 10 years

“…The social consequences affecting children and youth played out in schools and on campuses in different communities. Among children, Kromidas (2004) described how fourth graders in a NYC school stigmatized South Asian and Muslim classmates through their construction of a racialized enemy. Among college-age Muslim youth, many felt they were under increased pressure, leading to feelings of social exclusion, alienation and marginalization.…”

Mistaken Identities: The Media and Parental Ethno-Religious Socialization in a Midwestern Sikh Community

“…Ponterotto and Pedersen (1993) observed, "Children, adolescents, and adults develop perceptions of racial/ethnic groups consistent with the way members of these groups are portrayed (or not portrayed) in the media" (p. 32). Kromidas (2004) captured reactions to post-9/11 images of Muslims among a group of 8-9-year-olds in a New York City school. The children expressed bias and negativity, saying that Muslims "like money", "like to kill people", "don't talk English", "eat out of dirty pots", "are poor", "are terrorists", and "have long hair" (p. 20).…”

“…The role of the media in constructing the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims and the effects of that image on Muslim communities in the United States have been well reported (Abbas 2004). Moreover, the portrayal of Muslims in popular media has intensified stereotypical images of several other ethno-religious groups in the United States, among them Sikhs (Ahluwalia and Pellettiere 2010;Kromidas 2004;Kumar 2016). The influence of popular media in stigmatizing ethno-religious minority families and their socialization practices is an understudied phenomenon.…”

Where in Africa does Africa start?

“…It is notable as well that they assign no agency (or even historicity) to the African groups involved in these conflicts: such peoples are passive fields upon which Arab aggression is acted out -unless, of course, they can be saved by the intervention of western outsiders. These models also rely upon a progressive racialization of Arab/Muslim identities (the two usually seen as identical) in the USA, especially after the attacks of 11 September 2001(Hagopian, 2004Kromidas, 2004), in which Arabs are seen as intrinsically aggressive and dangerous.…”