# Unpack Your Perceptions About Diversity: Jamal

Describe your early perceptions about diversity in terms of one of the following: disabilities, race/ethnicity, language, or family structure.

1. **What are your earliest experiences/memories of someone with this difference?**  
   I remember seeing a crippled man who walked in our neighborhood.
2. **Were the experiences positive or negative? What were the messages given to you about someone who has this difference?**  
   Thinking back on it, I think the message was negative.
3. **Who gave you these messages and how were the messages delivered?**  
   My mom; when I asked her about the man, she said not to point or talk about him and to stay away from him.
4. **How did those messages affect your early perceptions of individuals who were different from you? How did you think, feel, and act?**  
   I thought he was a bad person. The conversation made me afraid of him. I would cross the street if I saw him coming near me.
5. **Do you still have those same ideas and feelings or engage in those same behaviors? If yes, how have your original perceptions been reinforced? If no, what happened to change them?**  
   Yes. Over time, I saw others laugh at him and at other people with disabilities. I saw many people with disabilities begging for money in the street. I came to think of them as dirty. And most kids with disabilities were not in my classes, so we never really had contact with them. To this day, I am uncomfortable around people with disabilities, and even though I know better, my feelings of discomfort persist. I think talking about it would have helped, but that did not happen back then. I think not talking about it and keeping people separated in school reinforced my ideas, feelings, and behavior.

Excerpted from The Making Friends Program: Supporting Acceptance in Your K-2 Classroom by Paddy C. Favazza, Michaelene M. Ostrosky, and Chryso Mouzourou.