Leaving Dolls Behind and Deflecting Bullets: Decategorizing Children’s Play Through an Intersectional Approach

• In Event: Bad Teachers, Riotous Pedagogies: Possibilities and Consequences of Refusing the System

Abstract

Alongside white, Polly Pockets, I had an Asian adoptee baby doll and a white Barbie doll who comes holding an Asian baby. Adopted Asians were exclusively children. This led me to think that an Asian-adopted kid like me would never grow up to be an Asian-adopted adult. I did know that I had to grow up, so I concluded, that when I grew up I would morph into a white person, the same way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.- Author 2
In exploring play with novice educators there is little recognition that play behaviors differ across sociocultural contexts (Marfo & Biersteker, 2010). Instead, development courses support educators in seeing how children learn through play and how shifts in a child’s play may reflect cognitive development. Without interrogating how whiteness frames views of play, educators misinterpret play that does not match their cultural expectations. These misinterpretations can lead to over disciplining children of color (Bristol et al., 2021; Strauss, 2020).
This paper analyzes the reflections of two novice educators who failed to neatly categorize memories of their play according to a Play Observation Scale (Rubin, 2001). They disrupt the categories of: functional, constructive, dramatic and games-with-rules by intersectionally exploring how their identities shaped their play. They specifically address overlapping marginalizations that they faced as a transracial, transnational adoptee from China growing up in a white, upper middle class household (Author 2) and a Queer, male raised in a Christian-Mexican, working class family (Author 3). Their reflections echo two intersectional concepts. The first is genetic mirroring which is the ability to see one’s own traits both physical and invisible in their family (Tucker, 2019). This contrasts with genetic bewilderment, a set of identity issues that an adoptee may have when lacking knowledge of their origins and heredity (Leighton, 2012). The second concept is critical reflexivity, the ability to reflect on one’s own intersecting identities to inwardly examine how one’s own cultural practices can be emancipatory for some groups of people and regressive for others (Paris & Alim, 2014).
Using a narrative approach, this paper centers stories as “lived, and told, not separated from each person’s living and telling in time, place, and relationships” (Clandinin et al., 2017, p. 91). The paper shares resonances across the accounts. The authors asked:
How do you novice teachers describe their play as intersectional individuals?
What points of tension appear?

Differences in access to genetic and cultural mirrors influenced how positively the novice educators had made sense of intersectional identities. For author three, playing as Wonder Woman helped him to critically reflect on stereotypes about Queerness in his Christian, Mexican community. Play was ripe for critical reflexivity since envisioned dramatic environments and child constructed physical environments offer safety to appreciate all aspects of someone’s identity and push-back against those that are oppressive. For Author two, playing with white dolls reinforced misconceptions about her Asian identity. Playing with siblings allowed both Author two and three to assume a mentor role and feel pride in their identities.

Authors

• Laurie M. Rabinowitz, Skidmore College

• Sophie Aimeng Levy, Skidmore College

• David Salinas, Skidmore College