I'm curious if anyone has any opinions/input on this, of any kind...no type of answer is off limits.

My daughters attended racially diverse school, we live in a diverse neighborhood, have diverse friends, etc. I thought we were raising color blind kids, but when my youngest daughter was in middle school, she had a physical assault incident with a group of girls, and expressed views that identified the behavior with race. After talking with her off and on for a period of time, it came out that there was a segment of kids that tied their behavior to race. It took some discussion, but we were able to make her understand that the behavior was not tied to race, but to socioeconomic issues, that lots of kids live in neighborhoods where you had to be tough and mean to survive, but as families had better education and better jobs, that sort of tough, bully behavior went away. And then we made a point of finding examples of mean white girls, and talked about why anyone feels the need to be a bully.

It does sort of rip your heart out, though.

I admire your child-rearing decision to proactively rather than just passively raise a non-bigoted child. I have to admit, if I had a child, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to address the issue so directly; I would hope that my example and behavior would be enough, but that may be a mistake.

It seems to me that your child is now old enough to start discussing the difference between race and culture. Socioeconomic background, educational opportunity, societal expectations and traditional family units might be a good place to start.

It’s certainly an incredibly complicated and vital area of discussion – good luck with that!

@syz – we have definitely broached the race vs. culture issue, but it’s a great distinction I think I will continue to enforce.

Were I in a similar situation, I would explain that those kids just happened to be black and that their skin color was no cause of the bullying.

It could have been any ethnicity.

They are kids. Kids will be kids. Some will be cool. Some will be dicks.

You don’t need to sit a child down and explain to him/her that they should be colorblind. You only need to set an example. They will follow.

No child is born a racist, and most children will emulate their parents in the way they interact with others.

This sounds so very much like what happened when our blond, blue-eyed 5-year-old went off to kindergarten. Raised on principles just like yours by parents who came of age in the sixties (with backgrounds much like yours and beliefs like yours), he was entirely unprepared to deal with prejudice. We had not taught him racism in any form. The Sesame Street model—you’re good whether you’re brown, pink, green, or blue—was his cultural norm. Nor did we think to warn him in any way that others might have been raised differently.

In his own neighborhood and in preschool, he had friends and playmates of various ethnicities without incident.

He came home from school on the first day saying that some kids at the bus stop had pushed him and torn his jacket. These were kids all from the same general neighborhood as ourselves, getting on and off at the same bus stop. He asked what “assel” meant because they had called him “assel” (he didn’t know the a-word). We later learned that they were Mexican-American kids, three or four of them, several years older. They went on to call him “whitey” and other names and shove him around in front of the bus driver, who never reprimanded them, leaving us to wonder how it would have been if he had called them any names. He didn’t know any names to call them and didn’t realize that they saw him as “different.” He knew nothing about raza. In our innocence and naivete we had let him believe that people would treat him as he treated them. We forgot to mention that other people might be brought up to hate him on sight just because of his coloring. In our own homogeneous neighborhoods and schools of decades earlier, we’d never been treated that way ourselves and did not have a clue. How do you tell a child that a whole group of people think of him as the oppressor?

He and our younger son both put up with some rough treatment in public school on account of their race; they were distinctly in the minority. (Some minorities are granted official protection and some are not.) We tried a few times to speak to the principal about it (a woman named Alvarado), but it never made any difference.

If people just bully you because they’re bullies, it doesn’t make any difference what color they are. If they do it while calling you racist names and accusing you of things because of your skin color, it does.

I think kids just like adults say that ‘black’ kid for identification purposes and not because they mean anything by it – on the other hand, they do learn a lot of negative things from their peers and their environment even if you try your best to be color blind…I think it’s possible to parent them to see everyone as equal, obviously, but the reality is that people aren’t equal, racism is alive and well and many of those black kids that bully him could be doing it out of racial issues as well, internalized racism or peer pressure…and it may be true that black kids bully him more than white kids and believe you me it may also be so that those same black kids are picked on a lot more because of their race as well by adults, no less…the key, to me, is balance…explaining that people aren’t different because of skin color but that not everyone believes so and that they can be a good example but that they won’t always like how others behave and that others will throw race around

I’d question the child if he is really picked on more by black kids or if he just notices more when they are black.

And if he responds that he feels more animosity from black kids than white, the answer might just be that people feel more secure when they are confronted with people they consider to be like them. When any group of kids gets together their insecurities towards another will be expounded upon by their own feelings of security within their group. Take for example the group of skinny, white cheerleaders who gang up and pick on the fat girl. It’s their group mentality ganging up on the other girl because they are insecure about their own appearance. Individually the cheerleader may not have ever said anything mean to the fat girl and may have even been friends, but in a group where their own insecurity will not be ridiculed it’s perceived as “OK” to judge and humiliate someone else who does not fit into that group’s perceived ideal.

How does a child not notice he’s being picked on? Do people think racist bullying goes only one way?

And one can imagine what non-white, poorer kids hear at home about white people, too. Where and when I grew up (mid 70s-late 80s Milwaukee), there was no love lost between the races, and I heard all sorts of horrible stereotypes about white people and Asians and Hispanics/Latinos. Never mind that I’m half-white, and some of those comments and anger were directed at me when there was no immediate all-white target available.

The only thing you can do is teach your son as he gets older and can understand more is that people are quick to blame and make judgements, but as they grow, one has to learn that that’s not a mature thing to do about any situation you find yourself in, regardless of what the other person is. And when he finds that he’s making a judgement about someone based on their race, gender or class, that he has no idea what was happening right before a situation, or how that person was feeling, or what that person believes about him as a white male. “Judge not lest thou be judged”, etc., etc.

I guess all this was to say that the main thing all kids should be taught is how not to take things personally and to keep cool by (oh, here we go) being present as much as possible. It helps a lot.

Given that black kids are just about as likely as white kids to have some type of racial bias, and that most racial biases will manifest as preferential treatment for one’s own race, and also that one’s interactions with people of both races are equally frequent, all of which are seem like reasonable assumptions, the latter especially in such a diverse community as yours, it is statistically likely that your son will have been mistreated by black people more often than by white people, with the reverse being true for any black kid. That is a sad but inevitable fact of any society with a tendency for racial prejudice, and unfortunately contributes to the perpetuation of such prejudice. This, combined with the socioeconomic effects that aggravate interracial hostility, lend validity to your son’s claim. I think it would be unwise to ignore this fact, and your son’s observation (while possibly exaggerated by confirmation bias with regard to stereotypes he has been exposed to by his peers, the media, etc) should not be dismissed as untrue. Instead, you should make sure that he is aware that racism is still alive and relevant to his life, and so he should be conscious of the effect it has on other people’s behavior, both directly and indirectly with regard to cultural and economic barriers; that way, he won’t be disposed to attribute his observations to fundamental racial differences. Being color-blind does not mean fact-blind, it means being able to see the real explanations for those facts. But you seem to have this all in hand; kudos for your good work so far. Some slight missteps are to be expected.

Children often do not emulate their parents regarding race. If they did, we would still be stuck with the racism of the 50’s. My dad always said to my family that he didn’t care who we dated, as long as they were white (and he got most unhappy when I dated an asian girl).
I remember meeting my great-grandmother, who was a sweet little old woman, and her telling me to watch out for them niggers. This is why it is good when old people die. Those attitudes often don’t change, and need to die out.
I am throwing out Lurve for an intelligent discussion.

Great question, and great answers! I have a similar situation as yours. My kids attend middle and high schools where they are very nearly the minority (this after attending a nearly all white elementary school). While we have always taught them to be color blind, they do notice the reality that people of different races behave in different ways (mostly due to socioeconomic factors – which we have discussed repeatedly). It is so dismaying to hear one of them say something like “why do black (or latino or asian or gay for that matter) people always…”! It calls for more discussion, and proof that it is not universally true.

Now for the good news: By talking openly about such things, they are aware of bias in themselves and others, and move beyond it. All of them have friends that look like a multi-cultural rainbow, and all are of the opinion that dating someone of any race (or gender) is A-OK.

Good luck in your worthy endeavors!

These are really interesting answers…I haven’t been able to read and absorb them all completely, but I can’t wait. Thanks to everyone.

My mom tried to raise me as non-bigoted as you are trying to raise your child. It mostly worked. But the thing is, there are more influences on kids than just their parents. There are also friends, media, pop culture, and everything else they encounter. With race being such a big issue in the world, he could easily have picked up on the ‘black’ thing just about anywhere.

I think it’s great that you’re being such an awesome role model. Skin color really should be as much of an issue as eye or hair color, but I’m sad to say that very often, in the real world, much more is made of it. In some ways, it’s as big of a group identifier as different countries’ army uniforms, which all have different designs and insignia, but really are all “just cloth,” right? And just like those different armies, some people of all skin colors carry with them the weapons of hate and racism that they were taught, somehow, to use.

Carrying the metaphor a little further, even though uniforms are just cloth, it’s often a very good thing to know what they all mean, especially to other people. I wouldn’t send a soldier to war unarmed, or unaware of how people who make themselves his enemy would like to shoot at him. Similarly, even though I would try to raise a child to be as open and unbigoted as yours, it may also be wise to teach him (as others have suggested) that not everyone sees skin color as being such a non-issue. To some people it is a very big issue, and they may not like him because of it. Forewarned is forearmed. It’s part of making him aware of all the potential dangers in the world, like strangers who offer candy, or how not to step out in front of a bus.

Also: to know of the danger of something does not necessarily mean to believe it is true. Gandhi knew of the violence that could befall him, yet he still chose the nonviolent path. The Dalai Lama has a huge reason to hate China, yet he still embraces nonviolence too. And if your son is aware of racism, he could very easily be a force for positive change in the world without becoming a hater himself.

Thank you, too, for helping be the change you wish to see in the world. :D

1. I think you’re over-sensitive about political correctness. I have a huge problem with political correctness in that it fights the symptoms rather than the disease.

2. It’s great that you’re telling your kid skin colour is nothing more than another characteristic. That’s how I’ve been raising mine, and her best friend is actually black.

3. Having mentioned 1+2, I should also say that we call her best friend “chocolate boy” and tease him all the time about his skin colour. And of course he calls my daughter “sugar girl” and teases her too. (and yes, he even teases me, he’s a cheeky little bugger). My opinion is that people are too uptight about colour sometimes, but of course you have to have an honest and loving relationship before you go beyond it. And no, it never ceases to be an issue altogether. Her friend is a very popular boy, but I’m sure that when he grows up and asks for some white girl’s hand in marriage, the parents will not be as jolly as they are now.

4. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “all blacks are saints”. There are good and bad people in every race, and not being racist means that you should be prepared to see both. When I was 11 some black guy tried to rob me in a bus, and I was so prejudiced for black people at the time (99% of the kids in my school were black) that I assumed he was joking, even though he held a knife to my throat.

5. The particular kids in your son’s school could just be naughty, and this has nothing to do with colour. Or maybe it does. Because even if you’ve been brining up your kid properly, these kids don’t know that, and for them he’s just a white boy.

6. Who said blacks can’t be racists too?

I think the number of racists in the US is very high, though still in the minority. It is very tricky to help a child understand that not everyone is raised to be as open minded as they are. My grandson’s suffer racism from being half Chinese in an all Chinese environment of their mother’s family.

One thing that has helped us, as they are older now, is the very funny and politically incorrect comedians on HBO. They make fun of everybody, and no apologies.

When I was little, my sister and I were made fun of because we had red hair, and she has freckles. We were the only ones in one school that did.

It’s best to try to teach kids that tolerance is the best plan, but don’t expect everyone else to have any. I now find the same thing happening with my resolve not to use swear words, and I don’t appreciate when other people do. I try to avoid them as much as possible.

Well, these are great answers and interesting concepts concerning race and I find myself agreeing with a lot of people here. I also agree that political correctness has taken things too damn far sometimes. Not all minorities are saints, not all whites are tobacco-chawin’ rednecks that would think nothing of running a black person down with his truck. I was raised in a family that the worst insult you could use was ‘pollack nigger” and my Dad often ranted about his absolute hatred for people of a non-white status.

I still have those voices in the back of my mind when I see someone of color pull a dick move, as you put it. I find myself automatically saying “Stupid N!” then I realize that this is incorrect. Anybody can be stupid, or do something stupid, skin color is not a factor in stupidity.

That said, I’d admire the way you are choosing to raise your kid, kudos to you. Not to get off topic, but I have a real problem with the terms African American, or Mexican American, or whatever. People want to say they are colorblind, but using these terms only reinforces the fact that certain segments of American society identify with racial cultures. If you identify yourself as an American citizen, then you are simply an American. No other country ness needed. If I wanted to identify myself as a racial American, I’d have to say Irish-Scottish-Flemish-French-Lakota Sioux American. That’s a friggin’ mouthful.

There is no way to be racially blind, because others won’t let you do so. And as for pointing out skin color in a story, well, I don’t see that as meaning anything, other than it being an identifier. But hey, I was raised by racists, and although I try hard not to be a racist, maybe some tigers just can’t change their spots. Racism works both ways, and I’ve experienced both kinds. Call me ‘cracker’ or ‘honkey’ and find out just how much that pisses me off.

I was raised anti-gay as well, and now being pansexual makes me the worst thing my family can think of me.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – I’ll do my level best not to call you honey. ;)

think of this, if someone is doing something you think is weird, don’t you ask why? And is it ever really relative to you?

@laureth I meant ‘honkey’ you can call me ‘honey’ any old time.

There have been great answers already and most of my opinions have basically been expressed. The one thing I do want to comment on is your son identifying a person as “the black guy.”

Why is that any different that saying “the girl with the red hair”? If skin color is truly just another characteristic to you, then there should be no more shame in mentioning the color of a person’s skin than there is in mentioning the color of their eyes or hair.

If there is a group of people and one person has blond hair, would you not say, “the blond guy”? It is the easiest identifier and makes the most sense. In a group of people with one black person, dancing around it by saying “the guy who was wearing the green shirt with dark hair and white shoes standing over by the door” makes it obvious you are trying to avoid saying black. That seems worse to me.

@Supacase; using skin color as an identifier is fine. I think what dalepetrie was getting at is when his son simply states that a person in a narrative is black, where this detail is not relevant to the story, as it would be if he were relating an account of, for example, student being picked on because of his race, and where, since there is obviously no accompanying visual, the description is not used to identify. In such a case, the usage indicates that the speaker gives more importance to skin color than they should, because they think that it is relevant where it is not.

My father is a sociologist. From the age of nothing I was taught that socio-economics are more important than anything for difference between groups. I am also a religious minority and was raised understanding a minority perspective (which by the way while reading all of the answers above mine I was thinking that everyone who is answering is caucasian, is that so?) and so the basic “do unto other as you would have done unto you” was easily applied. In my elementary school our gym teacher used to sit us in a circle and tell us the golden rule.

My high school was 40% minorities and I am VERY grateful to have had that experience and miss the diversity where I live now. In school I had friends who were from, or their families were from, Ecuador, Vietnam, Pakistan, Japan, Germany, Korea, Panama, and more. Honestly, we never thought twice about it, but we were all similar socio-economic status more or less. I do think when it is not culturally diverse, but very black or white (and probably true if it is Hispanics and blacks, or whites and Hispanics, etc.) it is very different then when lots of ethnicities are represented. The more diverse the more no one is the majority and no one is the minority. I only point this out as an observation.

Although, if I had kids, I would probably stick to the line about social class explaining more about the differences between people rather than race and religion, are we saying then that lower economic status means you are more likely to be a hoodlum? That is a sad commentary.

How I think of it is we hold stereotypes in our heads. I don’t think we have them as kids…I didn’t…probably because my parents did nothing to put any in my head, but as we observe people we start to see some similarities, maybe they are cultural similarities in groups. The trick, or what is important to me is when you meet an individual you get to know that particular individual. As I write this I am thinking maybe that is what I would tell my kid, that each person is to be judged on his own merit, are they nice people, integrity, maybe you have mutual interests, etc. regardless of social class, race, color, etc. Mostly, I think those kids at the lake were older, and enjoyed taunting people, which is awful.

It has been interesting to observe my husband over the last 17 years. He came to this country from Mexico during HS. He did not have an ounce of discrimination in his body; did not have one stereotype in his head about people, because they don’t really have the same minorities in Mexico as here, and he did not have stereotypes about different regions of America either. Over the years he has developed them, stereotypes, which I find very interesting. Still, he takes every individual as an individual.

@JLeslie; lower economic status does make one more likely to be a hoodlum. But that is no reason to treat someone as a hoodlum because they are of lower economic status. You treat someone as a hoodlum if they are a hoodlum, simple as that. As you say, each person is to be judged on his own merit, so I see no problem with communicating the first statement to your child as a partial explanation for the disparities in behavior they see, so long as you make sure they realize the second truth as well.

@Jayne I agree.

It is also true that being black also makes you statistically more likely to drop out of school, be a teenage mother, spend time in jail, all sorts of stuff we would look at as negative for society. So, we might want to ignore that race is part of the reason for these behaviors, but if we want to fix it I think we would need to acknowledge this and understand the mores and cultural atitudes within the subculture, but then I guess we are not talking about fixing these things on this thread.

I have now had the time to read each of these responses, and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and insight. This wasn’t really “troubling” me, I just wanted to get a good cross section of what people thought on a proactive topic, because I knew the responses would be great. Thanks to all.

I was often referred to as “that little guy”. It was just a characteristic of mine. Just as skin colour is.

I do it myself too: when I see a black guy, I often assume he’s cool. That’s just induction: my experience is that black people often match my attitude quite well. However, that might very well have to do with the type of black people I happen to meet. The same might be true for your son.

Even though you are raising your child to be non-discriminatory, they still need to know that others are. We will have discrimination as long as there is one parent teaching their child that one color is better than the other.

There is nothing wrong with your child referring to others by skin color. If everyone in the world was green, we would try to identify unknowns to others as the blond guy, the tall girl, the one with blue eyes… it is just a way to let you know who it was, not their attributes.

My kids are only six years old, and so far their interaction with other ethnicities has in general been unexiting. They have both white and “colored” friends. (sidenote: I find this stereotyping not very functional, however, since ethnicities where we live are more split up over cultural/religious background than over skin color.) They have already seen, however, that things aren’t always smooth.

Last winter, around 7 in the evening – it was already dark – the twins and I walked home from the local shopping center. Upon leaving the shopping center, there was a group of about 6 sixteen year olds that shouted at me. They said things like “what are you looking at, old guy” and “you better keep moving, or we’ll come after you”. Quite a nuisance, especially for my two boys and before I knew it one of my boys had shouted back a word that I didn’t even know he knew. Well… after telling my boys to not shout such words and asking the sixteen-year-olds to act their age, we continued our way and we kept discussing the issue.

After agreeing that these kids where just acting stupidly and that we should not worry too much about it, one of my boys asked me ’‘Dad, will Muradjan later act the same way, these kids did?” That was a scary moment to me. Kids look for patterns and the kids outside where obviously from the same ethnicity as Muradjan – one of their best friends.

In all honesty: I couldn’t readily think up great wisdoms to tell them, other than that I would expect neither Muradjan nor any of my children to ever do that and that they should try to not judge others by their exterior, more so since people quite often end up behaving the way one expects them to behave.

We keep stressing our boys that there is more diversity between people than between their ethnicities, however they live in a society in which ethnic groups are increasingly stressing their ethnic differences and “us” versus “them” is a common theme. An active approach in continuing to look for commonalities is desperately needed and I hope my kids will do that. The world needs to unite.

Living in Europe and being born in the wake of world war II, I have heard too many stories of where the path of ethnic devision leads to. Both my parents and all my grand parents have been in concentration camps and I deeply fear expressions of ethnic superiority. We have to actively fight racism and educate our children, so that they may and hopefully will as well.

Being of lower class may make one more likely to be a hoodlum, but being upper class makes you more likely to commit white collar crime like embezzlement or be some sort of investment community con man like Bernie Madoff.

Crappy thieves are crappy thieves and haters are haters – and if you are one, you will gravitate towards the crimes available to your social class like a moth to a porch light.

I’d just say it doesn’t matter what colour they are or what they do to you, love them all the same, as if they were you’re brothers, sisters or parents.

My children are white and attend a school that is about 90% black, and I am very satisfied with my decision to place them in a school where they are the minority. I at first did the same thing you do when they mentioned the color of someone’s skin. I would ask why it mattered. But it does matter. Like many people have already said, it is just an identifier. By me asking them why it mattered every time, I was bringing more attention to skin color than they were. They tell me what friends are “brown” and that is fine with me.

When my child is bullied, we do not focus on the color of the bullies skin. We talk about why that child is probably a bully. It is more important to me that my kids understand the sameness that we all share, and not the differences. My son has been bullied in the past, has tried to understand that the bully is probably unhappy at home, or feels badly about something, and in two cases, he managed to become friends with the kids that were bullying him.

@jamielynn2328 I’m sure a lot of people will think this question is awful. Does the school your kids go to have a good rating?

@JLeslie Actually in my city, it is one of two top rated elementary schools. For a city school, it is excellent. My 2nd grader reads at a sixth grade level, and my kindergartner at a 5th grade level, so I think that says a lot for the school and the teachers.