kids and racism

I live in a town where both are part of the general lexicon and it's still blatantly obvious when someone is using it because they use it all the time with everyone and when someone is using it because they saw a black person and panicked.

I'm not saying pp's kid falls into the latter camp given the history as laid out; I'm saying I 100% understand why he would wince when he said it in a different context in front of a different audience.

Sure, fair enough

I've been kind of wondering how to handle this as my daughter goes from a nearly all Jewish preschool to a public school that will be like 40% white, 40% asian, and the rest hispanic or black. She has non-white friends at the playground and in our building sometimes does promising things like directly identify with a non-white character in a book or show. She does tend to make comments like "there are a lot of Chinese people here!" when we, say, go to Flushing -- I feel like she is still a little young for me to say "that's not nice to say out loud" because I don't want her to think there is something wrong with there being a lot of Chinese people or shameful about noticing that. I don't think raising her to be "color blind" is realistic. I try to point out that "your mom speaks a different language, just like her mom," or "your mom was born in another country, and you are an American, just like him." Four year old minds can tend to get confused about these things, so my biggest goal is to just have her feel comfortable with there being many different kinds of people around and with it being ok to notice but not ok to make fun of or discriminate.

sounds like the way to go :)

Maybe thats a west coast/surfer/hippie/tech thing idk.

Bro, dude. Not "brah". ;-)

In case any of you didn't already have a snappy answer to your country cousin's question of "How come they can say it and we can't?", feel free to use my son's experience as one practical, everyday easy-to-understand example, which I admit, doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

ugh what a drag this is. daughter is only 3, blissfully unaware of any such stupid thing as race but she is mixed herself so there will be conversations I'm not particularly looking forward to.

"kids and racism" is all that needs to be said really, of course the only way we will end this nonsense is via the kids, but instead of treating it as a silly fun thing like star sign or blood type I'll have to weigh her down with endless explanations and history and old, old baggage and it makes me ill but oh well? can only do so much to prepare the road for her but I can certainly prepare her for the road, and so on and so on

The thing is, if EVERYONE had these conversations as opposed to just minorities, the conversations would get easier

I don't think raising her to be "color blind" is realistic.

Yeah I would just want to add - nor desirable