Sticky racial situation at preschool

[wildmonkeys]

So my 4.5 year old ds seems to be in a phase where he refers to everyone by their appearance. For example, if I say "grandpa is coming over" he will say "grandpa with no hair or grandpa with the big stomach" He is a very well-spoken little boy and has known their names for years so I have simply said please use their names. He has done the samething about hair color...for instance, I like the girl in my class with yellow hair or my favorite friend at swimming lessons has black hair. We have been prompting him to use names and haven't really worried about it much as none of the descriptions seem to hold any value to him....they are just matter of fact and looking one way or another clearly isn't better or worse in his eyes.

He has a new classmate who started school last week and after the first two days he came home and said that he had a great new friend at school whose name he didn't know yet. I was picking him up from school on Friday and as we are walking out and the mother of his new classmate is arriving and he turns and yells into the school in a super happy voice "hey kid with the black face your mom is here". I was thrown off and speechless - as much as he has been describing people to us I hadn't heard him call anyone else by his descriptions nor had I ever heard him mention skin color. I might mention that his school and the suburb that we live in are very diverse and his life is full of friends, neighbors, and teachers of many shades and backgrounds so this wasn't like the first person he has ever met with a different skin color.

So when we got in the car I told him that I wanted him to call his friends by their names not by how they look and he said fine but he didn't know his new friends name yet but he would and asked if I was angry with him....

I reflected on it over the weekend and just really think it is an extension of this phase he is in so I went in to talk to his teachers today and gave them the background on how this is a pattern that we had been seeing at home for a few weeks and that I hoped they could help me prompt his use of names. Well they acted pretty offended and indicated that maybe he had picked it up from tv but hadn't learned it at school. My point was that I didn't think he had "learned" it anywhere - he is just describing things as he seems them without all of the baggage that adults attach to being one color or another, overweight, etc. I left school feeling really unresolved with the conversation I had with his teachers and now I am not sure if I should say anything else to them? Anyway, I just feel completely unsettled by the whole situation as I am now leaving him with two adults every afternoon who he seems to have offended without any ill intentions. I also worry that their reaction may be a response to their own discomfort with racial issues and that that will have a lasting negative impact on both ds and his classmates.

As an aside, I am also not sure if I should say anything to his new classmates mom? The boys seem to be new best friends - now that ds knows his name he spent the entire afternoon talking about him and wants to have him over to play.

Thank you if you are still reading. If you have any suggestions they are totally appreciated.

BJ
Barney & Ben

[2tadpoles]

I really think he probably learned it somewhere. The reason being, I've never met anyone with a "black" face. "Black" people are actually brown, and if he was just describing the boy by his appearance he probably would have called him the "kid with the brown face."

This is just coming from my own experiences with my children. They never referred to black people as "black" until they heard others do it. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that black children probably wouldn't refer to white people as "white," since we're really just different shades of tan and pink.

[LiamnEmma]

I disagree. I see kids as very descriptive. My ds did the same thing, and even now will still periodically say stuff that mortifies me but is just another walk in the park for him. I'll give you some examples...

At about age 2.5, said very admiringly, "Wow Mommy! Look at that guy's great big booty!" of a very obese man as we walked by. He really did think the guy had a spectacular booty. We talk about butts obviously, but never in regard to size like that.

Just this last summer, at age 5, "My Dad is black." Well, I guess compared to me and my lack of pigment, or ds and his lesser lack of pigment, dh is darker than we are...

There are others that my foggy brain has blocked since I read your post, although I know there was one recently that made me think, "huh. We are definitely not introducing ds to a diverse enough group of our friends." But then, he started kinder in September, and his best friend is black. I cannot imagine ds having a better suited friend--they're both wild, they're both incredibly funny, the kid's mother laughs her butt off too at the two of them, but the point is, all my angst for naught. Kids say what they see. Sometimes they also say what they learn, but in some cases, a duck really is just a duck, imo. My ds describes what he sees but puts no judgement. The judgement is all mine to bear. And the reality is that some people are white, some people are tan, some people are black. Some people are white and freckly like me, and I've been told by kindergarteners in my district, who are totally not used to seeing freckles, that I'm ugly. They don't mean malice, they're just not used to me and they're describing what they see, you know? When we put negativity on our kids saying "Black," I've decided it's our own guilt talking, kwim? Sorry, now I'm rambling...I had to put a child back to bed in the middle of this...

[wildmonkeys]

2tadpoles - he may have learned it from somewhere but you are right about brown. In his classroom there are 14 kids. Three of them are "white" and the other 11 are "brown" his new friend is VERY dark skinned as compared with the rest of his classmates who he was waiting with so I think it may actually have been to distinguish him from the other children of color. On the otherhand our next door neighbor is in middle school and sometimes acts as a mother's helper for me and may have explained that he is "black" to ds as ds is obsessed with everything about him (there is just nothing cooler that a 14 year old neighbor and his friends is there?) and certainly may have asked questions about his skin color ad naseum while I wasn't around.

I agree, there really is no value nor any guilt in being one color or another and I guess that is why the teachers reactions freaked me out. The comment surprised me but there is no guilt attached to it for ds or myself - the classroom situation is one that I am not sure if I am going to subject him to...

BJ
Barney & Ben

[ChristaN]

Your thoughts on the child being very dark skinned making him "black" in your child's mind makes good sense to me. My older dd (who also had a very good vocabulary) went through a phase like that in preschool. She called her friends "my friend with the pink shirt" or things like that. Children are descriptive & the mother probably wasn't too offended.

None the less, I would probably try to muster up the courage to apologize to her. Perhaps if you call her to set up a play date, mention that your son is going through this phase (as you did to the teachers who reacted totally inappropriately in my book ) & say that you were embarassed when he refered to her son as "kid with the black face" & you are sorry if it offended her or her child. Most African-Americans are probably used to being noticed as a minority & as long as you make an effort to show that your family is not bigoted, I can't imagine that she will hold it against you. I wouldn't go overboard, just let her know that you are normal people & this is just a phase. I look at it like kids pointing out people in wheelchairs, etc. Most of us are totally embarassed when they do so, but I have found that most of the disabled people that I have come across are not offended by the words of children who are just curious. Not to imply that being a minority is like being disabled!

[LiamnEmma]

I'm sorry, my bad. Is it possible the teachers were being defensive because they thought you were accusing them? I'm not saying you were, I know I tread very very lightly with my childrens' teachers in general because the defensiveness is often high. I've recently felt I offended one of ds' kinder teachers and I've been anxious ever since. Maybe they'll reflect too and see your point, or, you might want to do a check-in with them in terms of conveying that you're not accusing them of having taught negativity or whatever, you just want to help ds out of it? These things are always so sticky.

I still disagree about brown/black though. Because my dh is Hispanic, my kids are brown, and I often think they're unconsciously responding to hair color when they refer to black...my dh has black hair, but almost no one else in his family has it...

[LunaMom]

If you don't think you can stop your son from using descriptions rather than names, can you steer him towards descriptions of clothing rather than descriptions of physical characteristics? Around that age I explained to my daughter that making comments about what somebody looks like can sometimes hurt their feelings even if we don't mean to hurt them, so unless it's a compliment, it's best not to comment on people's faces or bodies or hair or whatever. Maybe he can get used to saying "boy with the dinosaur shirt" or "lady with the red sneakers" instead?

[wildmonkeys]

That is a great suggestion LunaMom. I have been trying to push names on him but sometimes we just aren't going to know/remember names so clothes are a much better way to go than features.

As a follow-up, I did tell his new classmates mom that I was sorry if he made either her or her ds uncomfortable at all, that he is very focused on how people look these days though usually in reference to hair color and weight. She said that she thought the comment might have come from her son - apparently he has a new cousin that was adopted from overseas and there has been a fair amount of discussion about face color in their house lately since it sort of threw her ds off that his new cousin looked so different from his other cousins. Anyway, apparently she was totally stressed that her ds had been chatting up racial differences all afternoon at school and was especially agitated since my ds was one of a small number of kids in the school the same shade as his new cousin. Well.....she and I had a good laugh and took the kids to a park after school and spent a bit of time mocking ourselves for being so much dumber than our kids We also thought it was funny that we were both stressed about it whereas both of our husbands were like "so what?" Sometimes, I wish I was either a 4 year old or a man :

Anyway, thanks for the feedback ladies. I am still a bit iffy about his preschool teachers as their reaction was very representative of the larger issue that they seem to be very intense and not great communicators but I am just going to try to not worry about that as ds seems to like them.

Cheerio!
BJ
Barney & Ben