The first
of these audiences is the young children—especially
those attending an elementary school—that
are the prominent subject of the original article. While it would be
inappropriate (and likely far too advanced) to straightforwardly discuss issues
of prejudice and racism with young children, they would likely respond well to
the detailed pictures of a storybook. Popular children’s books include the Junie B. Jones series, the Charlie and Lola series, the A to Z Mysteries series, and the Clifford, The Big Red Dog series; the
covers of each of these are depicted with young, white children as their
protagonists. While the young students likely do not pick up on this
consciously, “same-race friendship preferences begin in preschool (Fishbein,
1996; Fishbein & Imai, 1993; Rutland, Cameron, Bennett, & Ferrell,
2005), [and] overall, interracial friendships decrease while intra-racial
friendships increase as children grow older (Aboud et al., 2003; Kawabata &
Crick, 2008)” (Pica-Smith, Poynton). Transforming the basis of Pica-Smith and
Poynton’s journal entry into a story in which youthful, relatable characters of
multiple races and ethnicities interact, playing outside, learning from each
other, and spending time in each other’s homes would relay the anti-prejudice
concept to children without them even realizing the situation at hand. These
stories must include detailed, applicable pictures and emphasize that
regardless of the activity, the children are engaging in it together. Each page will contain no more
than a few simple sentences, allowing for the children to understand it. It
must, however, contain a sufficiently complex and interesting storyline in
order to maintain the interest of the young student.
The second
audience that the new genre must be tailored to appeal to is the teachers,
counselors, and other staff members of the elementary school. Holding a workshop
or event that each of the faculty members must attend, in which informational handouts
pertaining to destroying the gap between students of different races and ethnicities
are distributed, would strongly relate to the issue discussed in the scholarly
publication. These handouts would include suggestions on how to go about
closing this gap, such as, “school counselors must be willing to openly discuss
issues of race and racism, prejudice, and discrimination with students and
adults in the school community to support the optimal intergroup contact needed
to facilitate intergroup friendships” (Pica-Smith, Poynton). They would also
include graphs and tables of statistics displaying the results of research,
perhaps pertaining to findings that “linked collaborative learning and teaching
strategies in the classroom to increases in interracial and interethnic
friendship and prejudice reduction” (Zirkel 2008). The handouts will touch on
aspects of pathos, in the hopes of
convincing faculty members—especially
teachers and counselors who deal directly with students—of the reasons WHY they should want to
eliminate prejudices; they are the ones that see on a daily basis how the
students are impacted by their environments, and they probably do not enjoy
observing bullying and hearing racist remarks. The handouts will serve as a
reminder that it is the job of the faculty member to take action to prevent
these occurrences.
