Smith on ‘anti-racist’ day care: ‘Let them have a childhood, and stop trying to teach them about racial identity politics’
On this week’s episode of the Campus Countdown, Video Reporter Addison Smith sounded the alarm on a San Diego State researcher who runs an ‘anti-racist’ day care.
Michelle DeJohnette, San Diego State adjunct faculty member, is also the director of Village Kids Family Child Care, a day care service in San Diego.
After George Floyd’s death, Village Kids took to Facebook providing a resource for talking to children about race. The caption read, “Please talk to your children about race. Please don’t teach your children they should, “just treat everyone the same” or “don’t see color.” Teach them to be anti-racist.”
Smith debunked the Village Center resource’s claim that children as young as three months old express “racial prejudice” because they gravitate toward faces most similar to the race of their caregivers.
“Babies obviously gravitate towards someone who looks like their mom, [more] than someone who looks nothing like their mom. That’s called being a baby,” he said.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with racial bias. It has everything to do with the fact that young children gravitate towards familiarity, because they are children… They don’t know anything, so they take solace in the familiar things.”
In the rest of the episode, Smith called out UMass for suspending three students for taking an unmasked photo together at an off-campus event, and discussed UC Santa Barbara’s new ‘feminist studies’ degree program.
Watch the full episode above.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @_addisonsmith1
