Newswise — Summer camp is not only a place to swim, sing and make macaroni paintings. It also can be where children develop attitudes about race and gender. Valerie Ann Moore, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, has spent several summers studying how six- to 12-year-old campers construct, maintain and cross gender and race boundaries, and she has drawn some intriguing conclusions.
Moore spent several weeks at each of four Northeastern camps—one predominately white, two predominantly black and one multi-racial and anti-oppression. In the predominately white camp, black kids were somewhat shut out of activities. Moore watched one white boy "give up white privilege" and adopt the language and behavior of the black campers in order to fit in. Black girls also "petitioned for inclusion" by sharing snacks and trying to befriend white girls, but the less popular white girls were integrated into the group before the black girls were accepted.
Also among her findings, which were recently published in the journal Qualitative Sociology, was that children of color were more aware of race and more apt to construct racial categories, such as labeling some fellow campers as "not black enough" or christening a Caucasian counselor they particularly liked as "nonwhite." The predominately white camp had firmer boundaries and more limited "crossing" behavior than the predominately black and multi-racial camps, she says.
"There is a notion that black families foster more gender flexibility in certain contexts," Moore says, noting that the African-American, Puerto Rican and Latino children she studied seemed to exhibit more freedom than their white counterparts.
Girls of all races had more difficulty than boys in crossing traditional gender boundaries. They needed structure and instruction before they would participate in "male activities" such as soccer or basketball, says Moore. Girls were the most likely to drop out of sports, even when the activities were mandatory. The girls who did choose "boys activities" tended to be the most popular white girls in the group, and they gained power and status through their association with the boys.
"Boys' activities were viewed as being harder," says Moore. Many male campers found it easier to join in "female activities" like arts and crafts projects that were perceived to be less demanding. These boys, who tended not to be the most popular in the group, avoided the stigma of being labeled homosexual by avoiding interacting with the girls.
The differences in behaviors at the four camps helped further Moore's understanding of how race and gender inform each other. She challenges the commonly held idea that gender and race differences are natural or inevitable. "Kids create their own reality through interaction," she asserts, "and racial attitudes can affect how firmly or flexibly gender is constructed."
Context, Moore notes, is an important consideration when studying child behavior. "Children act differently at school than they do playing with other kids in their own neighborhood," she says. She chose to study children in a summer camp setting because it was a "middle ground" between home and school.
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