Consequences of Stress on Children’s Development

One on the greatest stressors of my childhood that I can remember came to me in the form of racism.  I grew up in a predominantly white middle class area which means I attended school with mostly white middle class children.  In elementary school I was usually the only black child in my class each year.  Of course I recognized the differences in myself vs. the other children very early on, not to mention that I was reminded of those differences daily.  Well, it felt like daily.  I did have friends but not many at that age because I was a very introverted person.  I was shy, not very outgoing, and just not comfortable in my surroundings while attending school.  I do not know if my personality at this age was a direct product of my experiences and my feelings of being the odd child out.  Perhaps it was by nature that I was a little timid and just happened to live in an area that was not culturally diverse.  Either way I still to this day have memories of my child hood life experiences related to racism.   I did eventually find an arena where I excelled and was accepted, where race did not seem to matter.  That comfort was in playing sports.  I believe that my athleticism created a place within myself, where I learned to be confident.  

Hawaii has been collecting hate crime data since 2002.  In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents (Keller, 2009).   In schools children who are not considered culturally native also have experienced episodes of racism.  For example:

• The last day of school has long been unofficially designated "Kill Haole Day," with white students singled out for harassment and violence. (Haole — pronounced how-lee — is slang for a foreigner, usually white, and sometimes is used as a racial slur.)
• A non-Native Hawaiian student who challenged the Hawaiian-preference admission policy at a wealthy private school received a $7 million settlement this year.
• A 12-year-old white girl new to Hawaii from New York City needed 10 surgical staples to close a gash in her head incurred when she was beaten in 2007 by a Native Hawaiian girl  (Keller 2009).

Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii believes that the resentment native Hawaiians feel toward white people is related to “ancestral memory”;   Through stories about the theft of the land and culture that have been passed down from one generation to the next (Keller, 2009).  The Hawaii Department of Education has promised to take various steps to improve the reporting, investigating and eliminating of student harassment in the future.  Although racism does exist in Hawaii, many people not native to the land have not expressed feelings of discrimination and Hawaii continues to attract many tourist each year.  I chose this topic because based on my own experiences I do not automatically associate racism as an act against white people.  But racism can take place against any one of any race, ethnicity, or culture.

Keller, Larry.  Prejudice in Paradise Hawaii Has a Racism Problem.Intelligence Report, Fall 2009, Issue Number:  135 © 2011. Southern Poverty Law Center