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Talking to kids about Racism.

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Earlier this week there was an incident where a man posted a picture of himself and his co-worker’s son stood together on social media. Not an inspiring or news worthy story, until that is, you find out that this total loser posted the picture of himself and made racial references to the boy’s ethnicity. The boy was three years old, and subjected to a.) racial abuse and b.) internet shamming. At three, I mean, the mind boggles.

Apart from the fact that this story made me frustrated with our archaic society and apparent lack of intelligence some

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people have, it did get me thinking about how to talk to our kids about racism. How did that mother clarify to her son why he was the sudden focus of media attention? How did she explain to him what had happened? As a white mother, how do I make sure my kids don’t grow up to think referencing slavery when discussing a black three year old is acceptable – no wait, scrap that last one, I’m pretty sure it comes under teaching them not to be dicks. Yeah, it does.

As far as racism goes, I teach my children that the colour of a persons skin is

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irrelevant to who they are underneath – I use the same saying my mum used with me, “If you cut a person, they bleed red the same as anyone else, so they are no different. We are all humans.” And that’s true to a degree, but it doesn’t cover everything does it? I was asked a fair few questions by Reuben when he studied Nelson Mandela earlier in the year for the ‘Globe Navigation’ topic that they were doing in school. When they moved from the Arctic to Africa (very broad I know, but we are talking 4-8 year olds here) they learnt a little bit
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about Nelson Mandela as part of culture and history. Reuben found the whole topic really exciting, but some of it obviously imprinted in his mind because when he was away for the weekend with his grandparents he was intrigued to meet a family who “looked like Nelson Mandela” to quote my dear son (*cringing as I type). You have to understand that in the small town we live in, in Northern England, there is a very low demographic of, well, anyone who isn’t white. For Reuben it was a ‘novelty’ to meet someone with different skin colour, like in his
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books, because the demographic is so singular in our area. Reuben promptly started to talk to this family about Mandela in a hilariously innocent and totally cringeworthy attempt to get the children to like him. My mother in law told me that at first the parents of this family were a bit standoffish – let’s be fair, if you’re black and someone (even a four year old) waltzes up to you to talk to you about slavery or Nelson Mandela and uses the phrase “you have the same skin as Mandela”, your probably going to wonder where this conversation is
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leading. Fortunately, he explained himself quickly, and my in laws jumped in to add that his casual Yorkshire racism was based on the fact that he was four years old, didn’t know anyone from a different ethnic background because of his demographic and had been learning about race and Mr Mandela at school.

Once I got over curling my toes at Reuben’s faux pas (which clearly ISN’T intentional racism – I don’t think a four year old could be intentionally racist unless taught to be) I started to think about how I could explain to him that it

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wasn’t appropriate to make skin or race the first thing we noticed about a person. I thought about why he wanted to bring it up, and it’s obvious – he’s learning about it at school, he’s thinking about it, so he brought it up. It really is that simple because being four is that simple. I sat Roo down and had a chat with him, I asked him what he saw when he looked at me, he replied “Your brown eyes Mummy”, followed by “Your pretty brown hair” (which earnt him a piece of chocolate and probably led to response three) and lastly, “Your
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mouth is smiling”. So then I asked him, “What about the friends you made at the air show with Grandma and Pops?” He clarified that I meant the little boys with their mummy and daddy and when I told him yes he said they were “Black like Nelson Mandela”. He did proceed to mention other things, but it struck me that this was the very first thing he noticed. I asked him if he knew what colour his skin was and if he could think of a famous person with his skin colour, his response was ‘I don’t know mummy’. So we talked about the fact that his
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skin was white and we chatted about some of the famous people he knows. As we were chatting he asked me why he was ‘white’ but his friend’s at the Air Show were ‘black’ so I gave him the scientific explanation of melanin in the skin, we talked about heritage and how our ancestors played a part in what our skins colour would be. We also talked about how, if he held his arm up to Toby, or me, his skin was different – he had freckles in different places, the tone was slightly different etc. We said that this was because every human being is
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different, we all have different DNA and minds, but we are all human. When people talk about Nelson Mandela being black, that isn’t all they talk about – they talk about his amazing achievements, about what he did and what kind of a person he was. People are more than just their skin colour, so when he met someone who was ‘black like Nelson Mandela’ that shouldn’t stand out to him any more than anyone else, because if he put his arm against anyone’s arm, it would be different.

Either I’ve done a really great thing here and made headways

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in talking to kids about racism, or Roo is going to spend the next few years running up to every child he meets comparing his skin colour to theirs. I’ll let you know how it goes shall I?

Do you have any tips for talking to children about racism? If you do please share!

Harriet x

You can see more from Harriet at: http://www.tobyandroo.com

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- 23 Nov 15

Earlier this week there was an incident where a man posted a picture of himself and his co-worker’s son stood together on social media. Not an inspiring or news worthy story, until that is, you find out that this total loser posted the picture of himself and made racial references to the boy’s ethnicity. The boy was three years old, and subjected to a.) racial abuse and b.) internet shamming. At three, I mean, the mind boggles.

Apart from the fact that this story made me frustrated with our archaic society and apparent lack of intelligence some people have, it did get me thinking about how to talk to our kids about racism. How did that mother clarify to her son why he was the sudden focus of media attention? How did she explain to him what had happened? As a white mother, how do I make sure my kids don’t grow up to think referencing slavery when discussing a black three year old is acceptable – no wait, scrap that last one, I’m pretty sure it comes under teaching them not to be dicks. Yeah, it does.

As far as racism goes, I teach my children that the colour of a persons skin is irrelevant to who they are underneath – I use the same saying my mum used with me, “If you cut a person, they bleed red the same as anyone else, so they are no different. We are all humans.” And that’s true to a degree, but it doesn’t cover everything does it? I was asked a fair few questions by Reuben when he studied Nelson Mandela earlier in the year for the ‘Globe Navigation’ topic that they were doing in school. When they moved from the Arctic to Africa (very broad I know, but we are talking 4-8 year olds here) they learnt a little bit about Nelson Mandela as part of culture and history. Reuben found the whole topic really exciting, but some of it obviously imprinted in his mind because when he was away for the weekend with his grandparents he was intrigued to meet a family who “looked like Nelson Mandela” to quote my dear son (*cringing as I type). You have to understand that in the small town we live in, in Northern England, there is a very low demographic of, well, anyone who isn’t white. For Reuben it was a ‘novelty’ to meet someone with different skin colour, like in his books, because the demographic is so singular in our area. Reuben promptly started to talk to this family about Mandela in a hilariously innocent and totally cringeworthy attempt to get the children to like him. My mother in law told me that at first the parents of this family were a bit standoffish – let’s be fair, if you’re black and someone (even a four year old) waltzes up to you to talk to you about slavery or Nelson Mandela and uses the phrase “you have the same skin as Mandela”, your probably going to wonder where this conversation is leading. Fortunately, he explained himself quickly, and my in laws jumped in to add that his casual Yorkshire racism was based on the fact that he was four years old, didn’t know anyone from a different ethnic background because of his demographic and had been learning about race and Mr Mandela at school.

Once I got over curling my toes at Reuben’s faux pas (which clearly ISN’T intentional racism – I don’t think a four year old could be intentionally racist unless taught to be) I started to think about how I could explain to him that it wasn’t appropriate to make skin or race the first thing we noticed about a person. I thought about why he wanted to bring it up, and it’s obvious – he’s learning about it at school, he’s thinking about it, so he brought it up. It really is that simple because being four is that simple. I sat Roo down and had a chat with him, I asked him what he saw when he looked at me, he replied “Your brown eyes Mummy”, followed by “Your pretty brown hair” (which earnt him a piece of chocolate and probably led to response three) and lastly, “Your mouth is smiling”. So then I asked him, “What about the friends you made at the air show with Grandma and Pops?” He clarified that I meant the little boys with their mummy and daddy and when I told him yes he said they were “Black like Nelson Mandela”. He did proceed to mention other things, but it struck me that this was the very first thing he noticed. I asked him if he knew what colour his skin was and if he could think of a famous person with his skin colour, his response was ‘I don’t know mummy’. So we talked about the fact that his skin was white and we chatted about some of the famous people he knows. As we were chatting he asked me why he was ‘white’ but his friend’s at the Air Show were ‘black’ so I gave him the scientific explanation of melanin in the skin, we talked about heritage and how our ancestors played a part in what our skins colour would be. We also talked about how, if he held his arm up to Toby, or me, his skin was different – he had freckles in different places, the tone was slightly different etc. We said that this was because every human being is different, we all have different DNA and minds, but we are all human. When people talk about Nelson Mandela being black, that isn’t all they talk about – they talk about his amazing achievements, about what he did and what kind of a person he was. People are more than just their skin colour, so when he met someone who was ‘black like Nelson Mandela’ that shouldn’t stand out to him any more than anyone else, because if he put his arm against anyone’s arm, it would be different.

Either I’ve done a really great thing here and made headways in talking to kids about racism, or Roo is going to spend the next few years running up to every child he meets comparing his skin colour to theirs. I’ll let you know how it goes shall I?

Do you have any tips for talking to children about racism? If you do please share!

Harriet x

You can see more from Harriet at: http://www.tobyandroo.com

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My name is Harriet, I am a mama to three wonderful kiddos, living in the North of England - though I'd really rather be in the South where things actually happen. I am a serious purveyor of all things boutique or stylish for children and I have a fundamental need to share this obsession with people on my blog Toby&Roo. I'm addicted to costa caramel lattes and chilli - though not at the same time, obvs. Oh, and I sometimes use the term obvs... sorry about that.

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