Scholastic Press and the NFL organize a program for schoolchildren to educate them about diversity of ethnicity and religion (African, Arab, Hispanic).
[...] The event, part of the NFL's Super Bowl community outreach, concludes a 3-month initiative to expose Detroit area students to African, Arab and Hispanic cultures. Sixth-grader Shaleiyah Dorris is one of 150 students who have taken part. They've talked to each other and taken trips to ethnic museums around metro Detroit.The passage that intrigues me is this one: "they're not really different, just some things that they do are different" (emph. added). This 12-year-old's comment is the kind of thing that probably any newspaper reader intuitively understands and can empathize with, but what I think we have to ask is, does it actually have a real meaning? What's involved in making a hard-and-fast distinction between what people "really are" and "the things they do"?
"I learned a lot of things that I didn't really know," said Shaleiyah, 11, who attends Greenfield Union Elementary School in Detroit. "Like about the Arabic families -- they're not really different, just some things that they do are different."
Saturday's program will include wheelchair sports and workshops on dance and music styles of different cultures. It will culminate in a youth-only meeting for students to dicuss their thoughts on issues like ethnicity and gender.
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