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I need help Internet, before the Klan comes a callin’.
July 25th, 2009
I love my hometown. I would be perfectly happy to live right in this same town my entire life. I want to travel to other places, to see new things, and meet interesting people–but this is where I want my roots. Hometown is fairly diverse I guess. It is certainly not as diverse as some places I have lived, but it is not all just red neck, white people either. We have a problem here in the Huckablog household, one caused because we do not have any super close friends of different ethnicities; one I have no idea how to correct. The Son, Lordy, I do not even know how to tell you this without it sounding so horrible–so I am just going to tell you, The Son has taken to calling African American people “Chocolate.”
It started about two weeks ago, we were in the Huckablazer outside of Target trying to navigate our way through the parking lot. An African American Dad and his two super cute little boys were sitting on the bench out front, and The Son pointed and said, “Look Mama, Look Daddy! A little chocolate boy, and anuder chocolate boy and a chocolate daddy!” The Husband and I just stared at each other trying to digest what our kid had just said, and wondering how the hell we handle this one. I think I stammered something about how they had pretty brown skin which looked like chocolate, but that it was still skin just like his, and how saying that might make them feel bad. I think, I really was so stunned I doubt it was that articulate.
I had hoped it was just a one time thing, but then just a day or two later we were curled up in my bed watching an old school Sesame Street online, when Grover was having a talk about rhyming with Erik. Again, “Mama! Look! He is chocolate!” Seizing the moment, I paused the video, and pulled out my arm and held it next to his. “See how our arms are not exactly the same color?” “Yes.” “That is because God makes people in all different colors. We are all made up of the same stuff, just alike on the inside, but on the outside we all look different. One way we look different is the color of our skin. This little boy is just a normal little boy, his skin is just brown instead of kinda pinky white like yours. Do you understand?” “Yes.” “Good. Now we can see what rhymes with toy.”
The next day at Wal-Mart. “There is a Chocolate lady mama!” This time I was embarrassed and slightly mad because we had just had this discussion and he said it loud enough for people to hear. “She is NOT chocolate, and it is naughty to say that because it would hurt her feelings if she heard. She is just a lady with skin that looks different than yours, and we do not say mean things about people.” “CHOCOLATE IS NOT NAUGHTY MAMA!” I know that other people heard that, but think they thought we were talking about candy instead of why I was seeing his future as a minister/senator fade away. “If you say it again you are going to time out. No warnings. ”
Later the same day I heard him “reading” a book, Knuffle Bunny Too, and saying that Sonya was chocolate. AGH. How do I fix this? He does not go to school. We go to an all white church (it is hard to find a church in the south that is not segregated–sad but true.) There are a couple of bi-racial kids in our playgroup, but he has not noticed there is a difference in their skin, and I am wary of pointing it out.
Is it a phase? Should I punish him? We really truly have NEVER said anything even slightly racist that he could have over heard, so I have no idea if he thinks people a different color than him are really made of something different, or if he is just being silly. What do I need to do?
Filed under Boy is my face red, The Son, lexapro lexplains it | Comments (11)11 Responses to “I need help Internet, before the Klan comes a callin’.”
Teach him this one…you’ll remember it.
Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
all are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
You may even want to change the black to brown since that’s what he’s focusing on.
Of course, I’m his Grammy, but this doesn’t seem something to send him to time out over to me. He’s just expressing his observations in the best way he can for now. Continue to have the discussions on we are all the same inside and leave it at that. If he’s overheard, just apologize and tell them you are working on teaching him about people all being the same on the inside. In fact, if they are willing get near enough for him to perhaps touch them and let him feel their skin is like his.
He’s a great kid and very sensitive of peoples feelings, he’ll catch on.
I’ve got a better one. I didn’t even realize that black people were a different race until I was about 10. Before that, I thought they just had a tan (like Lisa on Saved by the Bell). I think it’s a phase, just like everything else at his age.
I just now turned to my husband and asked him what we will do if Bella goes through this, and he said that we will just have to keep at it.
It’s silly – but have you turned on a show that is primarily black, and brought out a chocolate bar, and give him the difference that way? “See honey – chocolate you EAT. You don’t eat people” – or something like that.
Like my husband just said – hopefully if a wonderful black woman ever hears him say it she will turn around and say, “You got that right!”. =)
I don’t have any solutions other than I strongly believe that he should not be punished. I also think he’s trying to work out the differences of people’s appearances in his own not-quite-3-yr-old mind. Hmmm….has he talked about vanilla people? I wonder if making that analogy using himself as the vanilla person…trying to work this out in my own mind here.
I think it’s similar to the curse-word phase kids go through (you know–the phase when they say The Word just to get a reaction from you and the less you react the less titillating The Word becomes to them?), so why not check out the experts whom you trust and their opinions on The Word and see if there are parallels? Maybe Dr. Brazelton has registered an opinion on discussing race with preschoolers?
And, believe me, my stance that he is more curious than anything and my opposition to punishment is based NOT on my grandmotherly love. Honest…both are rooted in my educator’s perspective.
Okay…some of it IS rooted in my grandmotherly love for him.
He’s two. And so he’s still working out the fact in his still-developing mind that people come in all shapes, colors, and sizes and speak different languages. (OK, maybe he doesn’t understand the different languages things yet, but someday he will.)
My son’s right behind yours in age. We live in Japan, so whenever we go off base we’re obviously surrounded by Japanese people. The only person of this origin that he *knows* personally is a little boy who lives two doors down from us, named Naohito. So anytime we’re in public, my son points and says, “Naohito!” when he sees a Japanese child.
It’s the same way he points to any servicemember in uniform and says, “Daddy!” Regardless of whether it’s his daddy, or any other man wearing Air Force or Marine or Army BDUs. Or if it’s a woman.
My daughter went through the same phase, though she didn’t say they were chocolate. What I did was bring her to the grocery store, and in front of the apple display say, “What colors are these apples?” She pointed out red, yellow, and green ones. Then I asked her if they tasted different, and she said no. So I told her people were like apples: they might have different colored skin on the outside, but on the inside they’re all the same.
What your son is doing isn’t racist. He’s saying he recognizes the color of chocolate, whether it’s someone’s skin or enclosed in a paper wrapper. It’s like calling all animals with 4 legs dogs. It’s developmentally appropriate. Just keep reinforcing that you don’t eat people, so he doesn’t come along and take a bite out of someone with dark skin, to see if they taste sweet.
While I’m highly amused (and living in terror of the things Alyssa will say) I totally understand how this is a huge problem. Seriously, someone could overhear when they’re having a bad day and be very, very not understanding.
If you can get him to understand why these things are hurtful and he stops then I don’t think he should have a time out. However, when you tell him to stop and he doesn’t, I would suggest whatever a punishment (skipping desert, going to bed early, no toys for an hour… I’m not sure what you prefer)
If I still had a lot of close friends in the area, I would hook you up someone to use as an example.
You could always try covering yourself in shoe polish and demonstrating that even though your skin color changed, you were not made of chocolate. Or caramel. Or delicious hazelnut flavoring. Or tapioca.
Unless you are, and then I would like to invite you to ‘wine and junk food’ night. No need to bring anything…
Oh, I’d be careful of the shoe polish. It’ll stain. Also, you could have a lot of explaining to do if your kid imitated it and wound up inadvertently in blackface.
That said, you can bring the kid around to see a light brown person and talk about caramel people if you want! Heh…ok, that probably wasn’t helpful, but It sounded funny to me.
I don’t think people will be offended by an age- and developmentally-appropriate comment from a little kid. If they are, you can ask them for a helpful and constructive suggestion.
I know it is probably embarrassing, but kids (especially really young ones) will express themselves the best the know how. The kid can relate to chocolate (he is after all your son), and it is a similar color to some folks’ skin tones. For some reason, flavors tend to be strong descriptors for people (especially children).
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. As he gets older, he’ll learn other ways to describe things (or learn to leave out certain descriptors that aren’t absolutely necessary…like skin color).
A random fact: the editor for our local newspaper edits out skin color in a multitude of police reports that run in the paper (unless the suspect is still at large and they are looking for a certain individual), because he thinks that reporters ought to be able to come up with better descriptors than race.
Oh, and here’s a story from my dad’s childhood that will put your son’s encounter in perspective. Keep in mind that my dad grew up in the late 50s/early 60s (he was born in 1952) in a town with a fairly large minority population. There was a department store in his hometown that had a popcorn machine at the front door, offering free popcorn to patrons. Every Saturday, lots of African American families shopped in this store, and gathered around the popcorn machine. Until my dad was about 10 years old, he honestly thought that black people smelled like popcorn. He said he never really saw the popcorn machine…just the people gathered around it…and the smell. I guess you know what happens when you assume.
As other commenters have pointed out, this is developmentally appropriate and he’s just trying to work out the differences in his mind. He’s a sweet little boy and I believe that his intentions are not to hurt other people’s feelings. I liked your mom’s suggestion of maybe seeing if he can touch someone whose skin is brown/black and noticing that it feels just like his. Also, I don’t really think he should be punished. He’s just trying to figure things out.
My daughter was born in Mississippi and was around African American and Native Americans almost from the start. She was almost four before she began questioning WHY we are different colors. I thought she was old enough for a basic geography discussion to explain that once upon a time people who lived in certain parts of the world had developed skin colors to adapt to their environment (not nearly so technical as that, but you see what I mean). We focused on her lily white skin and blond hair and blue eyes and her Scandinavian background, as compared to her half-Italian cousin’s dark hair and eyes, and we went on to explain that all of the people moved around to various countries and that’s why we have this lovely mixture of different people of different colors from different places — okay, so it seemed the right thing to say at the time!
A few days later we wandered into a mall and when we stopped for a soft drink and a rest, she climbed onto a big circular sitting area, looked around intently and announced at the top of her lungs, “DADDY, LOOK AT ALL THESE BLACK PEOPLE. WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY CAME FROM??”
I was wishing the ground would just open up and swallow us when this lovely older Black lady smiled at her and said, “We come from God, Sweetheart. Just like you.”
And at that moment, as the tension evaporated, I was quite certain that was EXACTLY where the lady came from!