13 Ways of Looking at My Young White Daughter: An Artistic Inquiry

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 55
  In Roundtable Session: Poetry, Visual Arts, and Autoethnographic Explorations

Abstract

Through poetry and visual art, the author examines the ways in which her white six-year-old daughter constructed and expressed understandings of identity with regard to race within her white middle class home, multi-race public school, and multi-racial, multi-lingual community. The author seeks to disrupt notions that young children are incapable of conceptualizing race, do not notice physical markers of race, and do not develop prejudice until adolescence. Parent child autoethnography and arts-based inquiry methodology are fore fronted.

Author

• Rhianna Kay Thomas, University of Missouri - Kansas City