Belated blogging against racism
(Because it only happened the other day).
PB has a set of crayons that includes one crayon of the peachy-beige hue formerly known as 'flesh coloured'. I vaguely recall him asking what that colour was when he first got them, and I think I said 'it's a sort of peachy-beige colour. I think we could call it peach', thinking to myself 'oh, it's that notorious colour!' (It's not uncommon for me to give waffly answers like that to PB about colours because the differences between shades are important to me and I want him to notice those differences and have the vocabulary to describe them. He already knows 'teal' (don't laugh, parallelgirl ), 'mauve', 'greeny yellow', 'sandy colour', 'beige', 'cream' and 'burgundy', for example.)
A few days ago he started referring to this colour as 'person coloured'.
I said that people were different colours, named some of the non-White people he knows, and talked about the sort of colours you might describe them as ('pale brown', 'darker brown', 'sort of olivey pale brown'). I pointed out that LB isn't peachy-beige, he's cream, and Daddy's more pink and cream, and I'm a bit olivey cream. But PB's still doing it.
I'm depressed. And a bit nonplussed at what to do next. Where we live is not exactly a haven for the brothers, but it's not all White either (and it's a lot better than York). He has non-White friends with non-White parents, including quite close friends whom he sees regularly, one of whom was at his birthday party yesterday. There are non-White staff at his nursery (not sure about children). He has books featuring non-White characters and even the dreaded cbeebies has non-White presenters and characters. But still he has learned that Whiteness (or peachy-beige-ness) is normative, at only just turned 3.
I'm not sure this post is terribly effectively against racism. I mean, I know it's important to draw attention to this sort of everyday racism, and not let it slide past unchallenged, but it would be more useful if I could think of some other ways to approach this with PB. (Suggestions very welcome).
PB has a set of crayons that includes one crayon of the peachy-beige hue formerly known as 'flesh coloured'. I vaguely recall him asking what that colour was when he first got them, and I think I said 'it's a sort of peachy-beige colour. I think we could call it peach', thinking to myself 'oh, it's that notorious colour!' (It's not uncommon for me to give waffly answers like that to PB about colours because the differences between shades are important to me and I want him to notice those differences and have the vocabulary to describe them. He already knows 'teal' (don't laugh, parallelgirl ), 'mauve', 'greeny yellow', 'sandy colour', 'beige', 'cream' and 'burgundy', for example.)
A few days ago he started referring to this colour as 'person coloured'.
I said that people were different colours, named some of the non-White people he knows, and talked about the sort of colours you might describe them as ('pale brown', 'darker brown', 'sort of olivey pale brown'). I pointed out that LB isn't peachy-beige, he's cream, and Daddy's more pink and cream, and I'm a bit olivey cream. But PB's still doing it.
I'm depressed. And a bit nonplussed at what to do next. Where we live is not exactly a haven for the brothers, but it's not all White either (and it's a lot better than York). He has non-White friends with non-White parents, including quite close friends whom he sees regularly, one of whom was at his birthday party yesterday. There are non-White staff at his nursery (not sure about children). He has books featuring non-White characters and even the dreaded cbeebies has non-White presenters and characters. But still he has learned that Whiteness (or peachy-beige-ness) is normative, at only just turned 3.
I'm not sure this post is terribly effectively against racism. I mean, I know it's important to draw attention to this sort of everyday racism, and not let it slide past unchallenged, but it would be more useful if I could think of some other ways to approach this with PB. (Suggestions very welcome).