Ask ARP: What should I do about a conversation about skintone that misses the point?
Dear Anti-Racist Parent,
My daughter’s preschool teacher had asked me last month if we had any preference for classroom books on family diversity, and I said I had no preference there, since she expressed no two-mom-related issues. But that she’d been very upset earlier in the week, and said that she didn’t want to go out in the sun next summer because it made her skin brown, and she hated having brown skin. So maybe some books on ethnic diversity would be a good idea. There are 28 kids in her room; all but 3 are white, as are all of the teachers. My daughter is half-Asian; there’s also another biracial (half-AA) boy and an AA girl.
I happened to be in class when they read The Colors of Us last week. This might be a great book to read in a diverse classroom. I suspect that the well-meaning teacher believed it to be a great success.
What I saw:
- The AA girl saying quietly to no one in particular, “Everyone is peachy tan, except me.”
- A bunch of pasty-white kids loudly proclaiming themselves to be honey / caramel / cinnamon colored. (My daughter did a survey over the summer, and fully half the kids in her class have backs of their hands the same lightness as the palms.)
I suck at being race-conscious - it took me from Friday afternoon until Sunday night to figure out that what I could have said in response to the “everyone is peachy tan, except me” comment might have been “I bet that’s really hard sometimes.” But I can’t help but think that the class sort of missed the message - and the other kids missing the message isn’t good for my kid. I have no idea how to clue them in, though. Heck, I don’t know how to clue the well-meaning teacher in.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
From Phoebe in Tulsa, Oklahoma
If you’re interested in submitting a question, please email us at team@antiracistparent.com and put “Ask Anti-Racist Parent” in the subject line. You can read past Ask Anti-Racist columns here.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
kim wrote:
After I was first introduced to a children’s book by the Pinckney crew (authors and illustrators), something along the lines of …ah, yes, “Shades of Black,” I commented to the family that had introduced the book to me (African-American, each person at least as brown as Denzel Washington) that everyone in the book was light brown or really light (reflective of many in the family I have created), but no one truly dark brown, truly evoking the image of the African from whom we are descended (as are many in my family of origin).
This family, both the mom and the dad, looked at me and said, “so what - isn’t the book great?”
I suspect that the perspective we walk the world with, inclusive of those who most reflect our comfortable norms, is the perspective we choose to believe dominates and is central to the spin of this orb on its axis.
You can speak with the teacher(s), drop off material, make yourself available so that language inclusive and sensitive to the needs of the more-brown-skinned children are consciously considered when the classroom projects are underway. But it doesn’t stop, and you won’t reach “success” with any one contact.
As to the little AA-girl who expressed her singular outsider-ness in the class, I would have much preferred to address how special-how unique-she is, and how none of the others quite reflect the things that are beautiful about her, and how that’s okay. She is not deficient, and being “the only one” is hard only when others convince you that it must be so…let her think of herself as the bird with the brightest, most colorful plume, and know that each of them is so in their own way.
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 1:45 pm ¶
Phoebe wrote:
I would have much preferred to address how special-how unique-she is, and how none of the others quite reflect the things that are beautiful about her, and how that’s okay.
Thank you - you’re actually the second person to suggest that angle on things.
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 9:10 pm ¶
Katie wrote:
Yes, I heartily second Kim’s advice! All the diversity-minded books in the world won’t help if the teacher’s not getting it and not supporting kids of color in her class.
Maybe even telling her what you heard the AA girl say, and the white kids say, would be helpful to her so she can see just how much her approach is missing the point.
This is breaking my heart.
Posted 15 Nov 2007 at 2:26 pm ¶
Meghan wrote:
The other day I was playing with my neice- she was coloring with a peach crayon and said, without any sort of prompting, “This is skin color”, to which I replied, “Really? Why do you say that?” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know- it just is”. Then I told her that not everyone’s skin is that color so it was pretty silly to call it skin color- didn’t she think? She shrugged again and said, “I know, but it’s just called skin color”. I didn’t press the issue further- I know that Crayola used to have a crayon called ’skin color’ but I’m pretty sure they’ve changed the name. It made me really sad to hear her say that in this day and age– and she goes to a pretty racially diverse preschool.
Posted 16 Nov 2007 at 1:43 pm ¶