Posts in "Children"

By Bonnie Kristian at 7:43AM

Jan 8, 2010

Western Execution of Afghan Children?

The (UK) Times reports:

American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.

Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.

I very much hope this report is false -- though I don't support our presence in Afghanistan at all, I also don't want this to be true of the soldiers we have there. It brings the injustice to a new level.

Side note: Have any of you seen reports of this in American media? I haven't.

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By Bonnie Kristian at 2:38PM

Nov 4, 2009

Can you tell the difference between a Palestinian and an Israeli?

On of these children is Israeli; one is Palestinian. Which is which? I can't tell either. In fact, the boy on the left is Palestinian, and the girl on the right is Israeli. But just as the artist intended, it's hard to see the differences here.

Using kids is a genius move for equally obvious reasons. It's hard to look at the pictures and not think about allowing their fresh faces to make up for centuries of mistakes, about letting them just be kids. Or maybe that's just me. If you're dead set on destroying the "other kind," these pictures probably won't have much affect. But for those good souls have simply gotten caught up in the fervor of the crowd, the face of a child (or two children who look like one) may be just what it takes.

Read more about this project here (I'm a few months late in finding it, but it's still worth a look). Read more on the situation in Israel and Palestine here.

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By Shaun Bowen at 9:56AM

Sep 10, 2009

Apparently now you're just born that way

According to an article in Newsweek, racism seems not to have an age limit. In a study conducted at the University of Austin found that children as young as 6 months can harbor "discriminatory" ideas. Apparently now, despite a child's lack of developmental growth that allows them to even understand what race is, they themselves have been unknowingly racist and bigoted. With ancedotal evidence like this:

When he was 4 months old, Luke began attending a preschool located in San Francisco's Fillmore/Western Addition neighborhood. One of the many benefits of the school was its great racial diversity. For years our son never once mentioned the color of anyone's skin. We never once mentioned skin color, either. We thought it was working perfectly.