In a comment, AlisonG asked:
I’m curious about how you talk to M and L about Asian appearance. My daughter (Chinese) is 2.5 and I’m searching for terms for her skin colour, eye shape, etc. that don’t come across as racist or offensive. Any suggestions?
I mentioned this in one of the previous posts, but I thought it might be good to elaborate on it a little.
We talk quite a bit about being Chinese or Taiwanesse or Asian and what that means. It is just a regular part of our day-to-day conversation. I suppose it might sound weird in other families, but in our house, it is was it is.
For example, last week we had tofu for dinner and this was the conversation:
Mr. A: “L sure is a good Chinese girl! She loves this tofu!”
M: “Do all chinese people like tofu? Because I like this one but I don’t like the brown kind (dried tofu).”
Mr. A: “Oh, not all Chinese people like tofu, but in China people eat a lot of tofu. Even if you don’t like tofu, you are still Chinese because I am Chinese.”
M: “Well, that brown kind is yucky. I like RICE because I am Chinese, right Daddy?”
Mr. A: “Lots of people in China eat rice, that’s for sure. The rice we buy comes from China. People in China eat a lot of rice, but they also eat a lot of noodles.”
Yada, yada, yada. (I should note that I often let Mr. A handle these conversations about what Chinese people are like, because I think it is his perogative to define “chinese” not mine.)
M doesn’t really have a handle on racial identification based on appearance yet, which is why I was so surprised by the park thing. We have tried to discuss it with her, but she doesn’t get it.
I just went and asked M to tell me what Chinese people look like and she said this: Black hair, kind of dark skin, and Chinese clothes (?!?). I asked “What about you? Your hair isn’t black?” She agreed that her hair isn’t black, then she said her skin is a little dark and she “knows Chinese words, silly!” so she is Chinese.
Then we ran through some examples of other people with brown skin and black hair who are not Chinese. She could tell me the ethnicity of kids from school who meet this description (Japanese, Indian, Mexican/Germanese etc.) because they talked a lot about this at her school*.
Then, when we went over examples of other people whose ancestry she didn’t know, she was clueless. For example, yesterday a friend and her son came to visit and they were both South Asian (but born here). When I asked M what they were, she said “English.” When I asked why she thought that, she said “Because I have only ever seen them in America.” (Which totally makes no sense given she has only known the vast majority of people in her life in America.)
I think she isn’t yet ready developmentally to grasp the subtleties of visual racial clues, unless they are very obvious or accompanied by another language/accent. I need to get out my book on raising multiracial kids and see what she is developmentally able to grasp at this age.
We usually let M lead these conversations and tell us how she thinks people look.
I just asked her if she thinks there is anything different about people’s eyes and she said “The colors? Oh, and also the size. L has little eyes, you have big eyes, I have medium eyes.”
I thought maybe she was trying to talk about Asian eyes as “little” but then I asked her to elaborate and she said “L has the littlest eyes, mine are bigger, yours are bigger than mine, but Daddy’s are the biggest because he is the biggest person in our family!”
So I think she was actually talking about the size of the person’s body and head, not the shape of the eye.
Also, I think the distinctions between white and Asian will be less obvious to our kids because they see so many people of both groups intermixed all the time (in our family, extended family, their friend’s families, etc.). It definitely isn’t unusual for them to see a white dad, Asian mom and 100% Asian kid in one family, white mom and two Asian kids in another family or all Asians in a single family. So I think no one really stands out as “different” in those to categories for her.
*There was also some negatives to this conversation happening outside our control. For example, her teacher Mrs. Kim told the kids that “Koreans have white skin. People from India have brown skin.” So even though there were Indian kids and Korean kids in the class with *very* similar skin tones, they were being told that one was “white” and one was “brown”. That isn’t exactly how I would have handled that situation, obviously. I would have had each kid define their own skin color.
My children are British-Filipino and they are very much aware of it, mainly because of the two languages they are learning. I am not wary about pointing out the difference because it’s not being racist to identify a person as dark or light-skinned. If my 5-year-old would say, ‘Look mum, there’s a Filipino like you. She’s got dark skin.’ I would say, ‘maybe, but she could be Thai or Vietnamese.’
We always discuss differences in appearance, language and culture. I don’t really bend backwards just to make sure they don’t understand them the racist way, because they won’t. I think if you’re honest about the differences but fair about how you discuss it with them, they would be ok. What I’m wary about is too much political correctness.
We’ve had a lot of those conversations lately. Yesterday Bella told me the clown at her friend’s party was Asian. (!) So that was followed by a long talk about what Asian meant, and which people in our lives are Asian.
I have to say, to me this whole thing is a good argument for living in a diverse community/ having many different types of friends.
Ever since my daughter was a baby we’ve openly discussed race and ethnicity and skin color. It’s just a normal part of conversation. She doesn’t get it yet, but I want it to be a conversation that she feels comfortable having. She does, at this point, talk to us about skin color and different appearances. She’s four now and while she knows that she is Mexican, Chinese, French, and Irish, she doesn’t quite understand what that means. She also equates the fact that she’s Chinese and Mexican to knowing the language or something similar.
One of the things we’ve done recently is bought a children’s book on children living in different countries. We’ve started to talk about the different countries our family is from and will move on to discussing other places soon.
My own parents weren’t really open about it all. I remember being very confused, in part because a lot of people – even adults – are confused about how to catagorize me. It took years for me to figure out my own identity and I hope that as I arm my daughter with information and the ability to discuss her identity that it will help her as she figures out who she is.
While walking down the street yesterday, we passed an Asian couple and my son, (just turned 3) said “they look like B and J”, friends who are Vietnamese and Chinese Australians. When I asked him what it was that made him think they were alike, he told me it was there hair. Similarly, he always picks out other people with very curly hair, like his, and seems to overlook skin tone as a similar factor. He has lots of friends with his skin tone, but not many with his hair texture. He is just starting to comment on differences, and it’s interesting that he’s fixed on hair as his defining criteria.
This discussion is really helpful, esp. the real life examples. I notice I get tongue-tied when it comes to some of this stuff–I was stumbling over whether to call my daughter’s skin golden or tan or brown or dark. But I’m probably just being too self-conscious about it.
This hits home. My 6 year old has been trying to figure out what it means to be Chinese. She would tell me someone was Chinese because they had darker skin and black hair (someone I knew was not Asian)… I kept asking questions to see how she defined Chinese and she never mentioned eyes. I finally pointed it out to her. We sat together and looked in a mirror while I talked about my (white) eye shape and her Asian eye shape. I think she now includes this characteristic when thinking about race.
Another piece that bothers me, however, is her vocal dislike of ‘brown skin’. She has mentioned it several times and we always talk about how everyone may look different on the outside, but we’re all the same on the inside, blah blah blah!
She has this new coloring kit where you use a plastic tool to rub a picture and the colors magically appear. Today she was coloring one and the boy in the picture turned out to have brown skin. She immediately stopped and said, “Oh. I don’t like that skin color.” We again talked about the differences – she does go to a very diverse school with all races and many nationalities represented – but we don’t seem to be making much progress with this!
My 6 year old equates being Chinese with being born in China or having ancestors from China. She’s also pretty aware of skin color. According to her she and her sister have ‘light brown’ skin, I have ‘pink’ skin and her Javanese Nanny has ‘dark brown’ skin. We live among people with such gradations of brown that she has to be specific, I guess.
She hasn’t gotten differences in other features, although she did tell me that her Chinese Indonesian friend has eyes like hers. But she insists that the Korean kids at her school do not have eyes like hers.
Watching her try to piece together identity is a fascinating thing. When someone here asks her where she’s from she usually says, “China” and then “I was born in China, but I used to live in America so I’m an American but now I live here”. Think we’ve made her identity complex enough?
we are starting to get a lot of race questions in our house (kids ages 7,5 and 3)…..mostly from the 5 year old…..my 7 year old gets that everyone is different and that is okay with him….I have a lot of freckles and they often put me in my own “spotty” category!- but I will be going out and getting the book you mention because the 5 year old is really processing this issue……..
Meg
I’m interested to see the conversation about “You like [x] because you’re Chinese.” As a white person, that’s something I’d be really nervous about saying to my daughter (or anyone else.) Recently, we were out at a Chinese restaurant with an older friend of my daughter’s, who said, “I get it! She likes Chinese food because she’s Chinese!” I said, mildly, “You like Chinese food and you’re not Chinese, and M likes Mexican food and she’s not Mexican. What other kinds of food do you like?” But maybe it would have been appropriate to say something like Mr. A said — more along the lines of “Yes, lots of people in China eat this kind of food,” or even “Yes, she’s a good Chinese girl”???
I still feel weird about that last thing. Maybe because I do not have a Mr. A equivalent.