Comments on: talking about race at age 5

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:20:46 +0000

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.

By: meg

meg — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:02:48 +0000

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

By: Elaine

Elaine — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:27:14 +0000

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?

By: shumei

shumei — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:34:20 +0000

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!

By: AlisonG

AlisonG — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:24:19 +0000

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.