ummmm - "racial" awareness
KathrynMD
member
I'm not really sure how to address this or if its even a problem.
DD is becoming aware that people are different races/colors, etc. The other day at Costco I pointed out a baby - and she said "Oh I don't like those kinds of babies" I asked what kind of baby she meant (assuming she'd say boy babies or something), nope, she said "Black babies" and actually the baby was Asian. ..
Yesterday, were assigning pictures of butterflies to all the girls in her class. Then I mentioned another girl and she said No, not her, we're only giving the Black girls butterflies. Which - like 2/3 of the girls we'd already "given" flowers too weren't Black.
DD's school is super diverse (one of the reasons I like it - everybody's there - lots of races, differenent nationalities - Russians, French, Kenyan, Indian, etc.) so it make sense of some level that she's aware of the differences, but I'm not sure if I should even correct her if she calls someone the wrong race and it brings up my own ambiguous feelings about always "classifying" people.
Is this happening w/ other people's kids, maybe this woudl be better on the school aged board?
Re: ummmm - "racial" awareness
Hi! Lurker from school aged board!
It's possible that she's calling certain children "black" because of hair color and that she has no real awareness of this term as a descriptor of race yet. If you don't dwell on race much, and she is around children who are diverse in their appearance, she's probably not equating "black" with "African-American."
I live in MD too (Mo Co), and my area is also incredibly diverse in terms of race and nationality. My kids are so used to seeing people of all skin colors that it took a while for them to understand that the term "black" means the color and, at times, the race.
When they were 3 or 4, I basically stuck with the preschool-approved message that you can be friends with all different people: boys, girls, older kids, younger kids, kids who like sports, kids who like dolls, kids with straight hair and curly hair, and kids with light skin and dark skin, kids who are loud and kids who are quiet, etc. But at that age I did not go into the whole race thing.
When they were older (like 1st grade) I did tell them about the concept of race and a bit about the history of racial prejudice in our country. My kids, unfortunately, have a few older relatives on both sides of the family who have intolerant racial attitudes. DH and I are raising our kids to be respectful toward all people. We wanted to prepare them for the eventual day when they overheard a family member say something yucky that contradicts the message of acceptance and tolerance they're getting from us and from their schools. I handled the LGBT community and same-sex parents at about the same age.
I also agree that she could be associating the color with something other than skin color. My son often identifies people by the color shirt that they're wearing. So if he doesn't know their name, he'll say, "the purple one".
But I have noticed that he tends to befriend kids that are not caucasian. It could be purely coincidental, but we don't live in a very diverse neighborhood and there are only 2 other kids who are not caucasian and they were his closest friends. This summer, during camp, it was a different class....same deal. He is friends with the only other 2 kids that weren't caucasian.
I'm not sure if he views himself as looking different from the other kids, but he seems to have noticed the other 2 kids who don't look like the rest. My cousin says the same of her pre-school age son, who also doesn't live in a very diverse area.
We haven't talked about race yet, but I probably will before he starts elementary school. His friends are mostly classified by which toys they like to play with.