Masses

Raymond Williams notes "There are no masses, only ways of seeing masses."  I agree.  How we group others into categories is one of the most important and, potentially, the most constructive or deconstructive social tools we have.  I'm rereading a favorite study, "The First R" by Debra van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagen which is an ethnograpy of a multiracial preschool where Van Ausdale spends a year, really observing how the kids interact and the sophistication with which they wield racist (that's the first R) categories.  Daycare providers and parents are appalled and always blame "the redneck down the hall" for somehow conveying racist ideologies which these good, fair-minded adults find offensive.  Van Ausdale has a different theory of childhood, that modifies both behaviorist ideas of imitation and Piagetian ideas of centralizing cognitive early childhood stages.  Van Ausdale argues that the young child, even prelingually, is mirroring complex social attitudes--"masses"--and observing them and the power dynamics they embody and that can be utilized in the child's own social situation.  Young children even know which things adults say they believe about others, which attitudes they overtly condemn, but which ones that, in subtler ways, they support.  Sadly, this is Black as well as white adults.  Asian too.  The kids "get" racism in a profound and instrumental way, even when our preconceptions of childhood (another "mass") does not allow us to see how subtly and clearly they understand some of our society's vilest tendencies.  Her point is that, until we understand the pervasiveness of cultural norms that children absorb, we will always be baffled by how racism persists generation after generation after generation.   "Masses" in this case are races (all of them), "adults," and "children."  All those ways of grouping need to be seen as ways of seeing.  Until that happens, cycles repeat themselves endlessly and, seemingly, without our own control or power.  Masses of the world . . . deconstruct!  I guess that's my holiday wish, my wish for the new year.  Yes.