In September 2003, I started babysitting a one-year old boy. My daughter is just six weeks older than this boy so they’ve grown into best buddies. They play crazy games with lots of chasing and shrieking, she bosses him around, they fuss at each other, they explore the backyard and lately, she cries when he goes home.
Last week, I was talking with this 3-year old boy, discussing who would be picking him up. His parents have been divorced for almost a year now, and they share custody equally, so one week his mom picks him up and then the next week, his dad picks him up. (The day in question, his dad was due to pick him up–on Wednesday nights, the parent without custody for the week gets to have the boy overnight.) So every afternoon, we talk about which parent is coming. This particular day, I said, “Tell me about your dad.”
And the boy said, “My dad is black.”
This fact was no surprise to me–after all, I can’t possibly overlook the fact that his father is an imposing man with strong African features. He’s from Nigeria, after all, and still speaks with a lilting accent.
But I was shocked, nonetheless, because we don’t use labels to describe people in our house. We’ll talk about their eye color or their hair color or on a rare occasion, their skin color (brownish, my kids will say, or kind of tan or even pink). But never black, white, Asian, Hispanic.
So I gently asked, “Who told you that?”
“Susie.” His 4-year old cousin.
I blinked. Then said, “Tell me about your mom. What about her?”
He said, “My mom is white.”
I said, “What about you?”
He said, “I’m white.” With his big brown eyes, he glanced down at his tan skin when he said that.
I just sighed. Why do we have to use these labels in this first place?
That day, when his father picked him up, the first thing the boy said was, “Dad, you are black!” And his father shrugged and said, “Yes, I am black.” I kind of shrugged. What an awkward moment.
The next day, when his mom picked him up from my house, she said, “Um, did anything racial come up yesterday?”
I told her about the boy saying, “My dad is black.” I told her that he reported his cousin told him that. She said, “Oh.”
Then she told me that the night before, the boy’s dad called her and accused her of being a racist. He said he didn’t want the boy to have to deal with racial issues at his age. She said, “I don’t either!”
Until that day, the boy simply had a dad and a mom. Now, he knows that he has a black dad and a white mom. Does that mean it matters? Does the label make a difference?
Commenting on racial and ethnic issues makes me nervous. If one notices differences, is one a racist? If I don’t mention someone’s ethnic heritage, am I disrespecting their culture? I can never be anything other than a white woman and as such, it’s hard to figure out what I’m allowed to say or not say.
I used to live in an area with a mostly white population. I remember the afternoon we were visiting a church couple and the wife explained about all that she had to leave behind when they left Detroit for northern Michigan. They sacrificed their beautiful home with its white carpets when Detroit began desegregating its schools in 1976. She spoke as if fleeing desegregation was somehow noble and righteous. In their eyes, they rescued their kids from having to go to school with black kids.
I suppose I am a coward because I said nothing, though I felt a queasy in the presence of this woman was seemed unaware of her utter racism.
So I was happy when we moved back here to the Pacific Northwest where our children go to school with a diverse population of kids. We do our best to raise our kids to be colorblind.
But then a child hears from another child who heard from an adult somewhere that some of us are black and some of us are white and some of us wonder why those labels make us cringe. I wonder if the day will ever come when we are all just plain old people who have different colored eyes and different ancestors and different shades of skin?
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Sometimes my son used to ask questions like this. He asked me why our neighbor that he played with had a father with light skin and a mother with dark skin. I told him that that was who God chose as his parents and that they loved each other and wanted to get married and have kids. He was fine with that answer at the time. He was 4 or 5.
We have friends of all different colors and races so it wasn’t that aspect of it that he was questioning as much as the fact that the parents looked different from one another.
Anyway, I think it’s okay to acknowledge differences if asked. People do look different. But it’s not just color. Some people wear glasses. Some people are tall. Some people have curly hair. Some people are in wheelchairs. But we are all similar in most ways, and you can point that out too.
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Sadly, where I live the different races are also in very different socio-economic groups, and therefore live in different areas. I regret that for my children, because I know that they are NOT colorblind. But we do what we can to show them that neither race nor money should change how we treat people!
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Well said, Mel.
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What would be even more wonderful than not noticing race (because, really, we notice the difference between a maple tree and an oak tree, right?) is if we get to the point where we notice, and celebrate the beauty of each culture, and a boy can notice that his skin color is different from his mom’s or his dad’s, or his neighbors, and think “cool!”.
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beautifully put.
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Wow. Our kids grow up too fast. My son stil says, “brown skinned.” I like it like that. He’s learned a lot in school about racism and slavery and yet he hasn’t added 2+2 to figure out that his friend M is black. I like it that way. One day he’ll be the evil white male who is the symbol of oppression. Between now and then I hope he comes to the fullest realization of the divinity in our fellow humans possible.
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“I wonder if the day will ever come when we are all just plain old people who have different colored eyes and different ancestors and different shades of skin?”
That would be heaven you are wanting, Mel.
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The one I really hate is that where we live, near Chicago, you have to be somewhat aware of races, because it’s one of the primary ways to tell if you’re safe or not. There are parts of the city where white people just aren’t safe late at night — and, of course, if you look around and see other white people, you’re not in one of those parts of the city, but if you look around and see no white people, you might be. This having to be aware in order to be safe really makes it hard to eliminate racism from my subconscious. I hate that, but I have to deal with it; it’s a fact of life here.
Fortunately, the immediate area around our house is very open and safe for all races, and so we have a very interesting block with people from all kinds of backgrounds. It makes things interesting, and fun, and the kids all seem to play together with complete disregard for skin colors, which is nice.
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I can’t think of many more diverse places than here in Southern California. Really, I think pretty much all races and cultures are represented here, and that is a good thing.
How sad for that little boy that so early in life he had had it pointed out to him that his family is “different.”
Hopefully some day soon we can move past skin colo…
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You mean accept people as individuals? Wouldn?t that be great?
That means you must accept a bag lady in the same way you accept a banker. You must accept a drag queen in the same way you accept a soccer mom. If you are a Christian you must accept the atheist. That?ll be nice, huh?
Except when the atheist, drag queen who is also a bag lady wants to run for city council.
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my brother and his wife have white skin. They adopted a baby girl that has brown skin. When she was around 4 she started to notice the difference in how they looked (skin-wise). I think it’s completely natural at this age to notice the difference and it has nothing to do with “race.”
One time when they were out walking, they passed some other “brown” people and she shouted out to them “Hi browns!” My sister-n-law wanted to crawl underneath something even though it was pure innocence on her daughter’s part.
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How strange. I babysat a little 3 year old girl yesterday who is of Puerto Rican descent…though looking at her, you’d never know it. She is only 1/4 PR.
I was SHOCKED when she stared at me and said, “You have brown skin!”
I was like “Huh?”
I am of european heritage — Austrian and German though I look like I could have walked out of Spain — we don’t know where that came from.
This girl’s mom is darker than me in summer — way darker — though now I am darker than her (in Winter).
It was just weird. I wonder if race comes up in this family — and in WHAT way. Do they feel picked on — or do they pick on others? That is the BIG Q.
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I think it’s strange NOT to talk about race. Your aversion to it suggests that you somehow think it is “bad” to label someone as black, asian or white. Why would it make you sad to think that this child thinks of his father as black, when he is in fact black? Colorblindness is something only white people believe in.
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Anonymous, you think it’s a good idea to teach children to label people “black” and “white”? What purpose does that serve?
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My three-year-old son said “I wish I had a brown face,” as he looked in the mirror. I asked why and he said he saw a guy at our church with a brown face and he liked it.
I used the opportunity to say that people have different colors for their skin because God thought it would look nice to have lots of colors. Isn’t it *great* to have different races?
Kids notice. When we act like it is naughty or shameful to notice, kids wonder why, what is the big deal?
I have no problem with my kids noticing the beauty of individuals, including their skin. I would have a huge problem if they treated someone differently because of those differences. That is racism.
Noticing is not racism—its what you do after you notice that separates the racists from the nice people.
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Good post, Mel. Noticing different races at that age is no big deal, but there’s obviously more going on with that little boy.
“Colorblindness is something only white people believe in.” Martin Luther King would likely have disagreed with that statement.
I’m going to have to blog this one myself.
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We do address both issues here – if one of our children first notices that all in our family don’t have the same skin color, we cheerfully acknowledge that they are correct – or eye color, or height – that there are lots of different ways God makes people, even in the same family. And that we’re different in how we *are*; brother M is talky, brother N quiet, sister C loves math, sister S doesn’t.
If race first comes up from the “outside” (similar to your daycare child) where child’s first exposure to the concept is overhearing Mama called white or Papa called black, then I take out a sheet of paper. I ask what color it is. Even the littlest knows, “white”. Then I place my arm next to it and ask what color my arm is . . .brown. Then their arm. Brown. Then dh’s arm. Brown. Then I just explain briefly that words like “black, white, brown” are just the words people use to describe different shades of brown.
I agree with posters these questions are good, allowing us to approach race first from the healthy and wholesome. Most of my own children have had racist comments or events in their young lives (our worst racist incidents have been here in the Pacific NW), so these conversations are vital to have early *before* race is encountered in a more negative way.
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Let’s toss sexual preference into this mix also, because I think it belongs.
Differences between humans have been the cause of much strife, be it the color of their skin, their religion, the neighborhood in which they live, how much money they make, their political stances, etc.
I adore the diversity of the locale in which I live. I wish more parents would be open enough to teach their children that we all are equal and worthy of respect despite our differences. We would all live a more peaceful existence.
Suzanne
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Anonymous here. I think that honestly discussing race, and acknowledging differences in skin color, in opportunity, in background, in history, would allow us as a society to at least partially do away with the negative connotations those words carry. I ask you what is wrong with calling someone black? What feeling does that give you inside, why do you feel bad about it? I don’t feel bad saying that someone is black — why should I? Should I feel bad when I say that my daughter has green eyes? Should I feel bad when I say I am 5 feet tall? Why should facts like this make us ashamed? I think when we are able to talk about race as a society, we will be halfway to it not mattering.
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There is nothing wrong with 3 or 4 year old “wanting a brown face” or discussing the colors of skin – children at that age don’t conceptualize skin color in regards to race as we do but they do start to notice differences in people physically – I AM IN AN INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE (black/white) WITH CHILDREN – I DO NOT BELIEVE IN PEOPLE BEING COLORBLIND – and NO Dr. King would not have disagreed. Being colorblind means DISMISSING A PERSON’S CULTURE WHICH IS PART OF WHO THEY ARE and putting them all in a “MELTING POT” – we don’t want a melting pot WE WANT A MIXED SALAD where everyone retains their beautiful unique qualities yet at the same time works well together. Don’t be “colorblind” when you see my children, recognize their rich heritage that comes from having a haitian father and irish mother. You don’t choose to be racist when you choose NOT to be colorblind, you choose to see a person as a beautiful, unique individual – a human being.
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REV-ED: FYI regarding “colorblind” and Dr. King. If you’ve read his writings you know that the “colorblind” he speaks of is regarding the judging of people and also the laws governing people – back in the day of MLK there was segregation and laws applied differently depending on the color of your skin – Dr.King wanted those LAWS to be “colorblind” and for the JUDGEMENT of people to be “colorblind” – this is different and apart from looking at this WORLD as a “colorblind” person i.e. not recognizing and celebrating the cultural differences of all human beings.
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We discuss nationalities in my home often. I’m Irish and German. My husband is German. My grandmother is Japanese. My brother has four children of his own that are part Irish, German, and African-American. We use brown, white, yellow, and red to describe skin color. And it has nothing to do with race – it’s just an adjective.
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I, too, have often wondered if that day will come and maybe it will. When I was growing up people who weren’t “white” couldn’t eat in the same restaurants, drink at the same water fountains, use the same bathrooms and all names for “them” were meant to be derogetory. I’m hoping we’ve made some headway since then.
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