Jonathan’s confusion about society’s “color” language was not surprising or unusual. At the same time that preschoolers are identifying the colors in the crayon box, they are also beginning to figure out racial categorizations. The color-coded language of social categories obviously does not match the colors we use to label objects. People of Asian descent are not really “yellow” like lemons; Native Americans don’t really look “red” like apples. I understood the problem and was prepared for this kind of confusion.
What was of most concern to me at that moment was the tone of my son’s question. In his tone of voice was the hint that maybe he was not comfortable being identified as Black, and I wondered what messages he was taking in about being African American. I said that if he wanted to, he could tell his classmate that he was African American. I said that he should feel very proud to have ancestors who were from Africa. I was just beginning to talk about ancient African civilizations when he interrupted me. “If Africa is so great, what are we doing here?” he asked.
I had not planned to have a conversation about slavery with my four-year-old in the grocery store that day. But I didn’t see how I could answer his question otherwise. Slavery is a topic that makes many of us uncomfortable. Yet the nature of Black-White race relations in the United States has been forever shaped by slavery and its social, psychological, and economic legacies. It requires discussion. But how does one talk to a four-year-old about this legacy of cruelty and injustice?
I began at the beginning. I knew his preschool had discussed the colonial days when Europeans first came to these shores. I reminded him of this and said:
A long, long time ago, before there were grocery stores and roads and houses here, the Europeans came. And they wanted to build roads and houses and grocery stores here, but it was going to be a lot of work. They needed a lot of really good, strong, smart workers to cut down trees, and build roads, and work on farms, and they didn’t have enough. So they went to Africa to get the strongest, smartest workers they could find. Unfortunately they didn’t want to pay them. So they kidnapped them and brought them here as slaves. They made them work and didn’t pay them. And that was really unfair.
Even as I told this story I was aware of three things: (1) I didn’t want to frighten this four-year-old, who might worry that these things would happen to him (another characteristic of four-year-old thinking); (2) I wanted him to know that his African ancestors were not just passive victims but had found ways to resist their victimization; and (3) I did not want him to think that all White people were bad. It is possible to have White allies.
So I continued:
Now, this was a long, long time ago. You were never a slave. I was never a slave. Grandmommy and Granddaddy were never slaves. This was a really long time ago, and the Africans who were kidnapped did whatever they could to escape. But sometimes the Europeans had guns and the Africans didn’t, so it was hard to get away. But some even jumped off the boats into the ocean to try to escape. There were slave rebellions, and many of the Africans were able to escape to freedom after they got here, and worked to help other slaves get free. Now, even though some White people were kidnapping Africans and making them work without pay, other White people thought that this was very unfair, which it was. And those White people worked along with the Black people to bring an end to slavery. So now it is against the law to have slaves.
Jonathan was paying very close attention to my story, and when I declared that slavery had ended a long time ago, he asked, “Well, when they weren’t slaves anymore, why didn’t they go back to Africa?” Thanks to the African American history classes I took in college, I knew enough to say, “Well, some did. But others might not have been able to because they didn’t have enough money, and besides that, by then they had families and friends who were living here and they might have wanted to stay.”
“And this is a nice place, too,” he declared.
“Yes it is.”
Over the next few weeks, an occasional question would come up about my story, and I knew that Jonathan was still digesting what I had said. Though I did not anticipate talking about slavery with my four-year-old, I was glad in retrospect that it was I who had introduced him to the subject, because I was able to put my own spin on this historical legacy, emphasizing both Black resistance to victimization and White resistance to the role of victimizer.
Too often I hear from young African American students the embarrassment they have felt in school when the topic of slavery is discussed, ironically one of the few ways that the Black experience is included in their school curriculum. Uncomfortable with the portrayal of their group as helpless victims—the rebellions and resistance offered by the enslaved Africans are rarely discussed—they squirm uncomfortably as they feel the eyes of White children looking to see their reaction to this subject.
In my professional development work with White teachers, they sometimes remark how uncomfortable they, too, are with this and other examples of the painful history of race relations in the United States. As one elementary school teacher said,
It is hard to tell small children about slavery, hard to explain that Black young men were lynched, and that police turned firehoses on children while other men bombed churches, killing Black children at their prayers. This history is a terrible legacy for all of us. The other day a teacher told me that she could not look into the faces of her students when she taught about these things. It was too painful, and too embarrassing.… If we are all uncomfortable, something is wrong in our approach.6
Something is wrong. While I think it is necessary to be honest about the racism of our past and present, it is also necessary to empower children (and adults) with the vision that change is possible. Concrete examples are critical. For young children these examples can sometimes be found in children’s picture books. One of my favorites is Faith Ringgold’s Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky.7 Drawing on historical accounts of the Underground Railroad and the facts of Harriet Tubman’s life, this story is told from the point of view of a young Black girl who travels back in time and experiences both the chilling realities of slavery and the power of her own resistance and eventual escape.
White people are present in the story both as enemies (slave owners) and as allies (abolitionists). This dual representation is important for children of color, as well as for White children. I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with a White friend who often talked to her then-preschool son about issues of social justice. He had been told over and over the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, and it was one of his favorites as a four-year-old. But as he got a little older she began to notice a certain discomfort in him when she talked about these issues. “Are all White people bad?” he asked her. At the age of five, he seemed to be feeling badly about being White. She asked me for some advice. I recommended she begin talking more about what White people had done to oppose injustice. Finding examples of this in children’s literature can be a challenge, but one example is Jeanette Winter’s book Follow the Drinking Gourd.8 This too is a story about the Underground Railroad, but it highlights the role of a White man named Peg Leg Joe and other White allies who offer assistance along the escape route, again providing a tangible example of White resistance to injustice.
A Question of Color
All of these preschool questions reflect the beginning of a developing racial identity. The particular questions my child asked me reflected his early experience as one of few Black children in a predominantly White community. Even in the context of all-Black communities, the color variations in the community, even within families, can lead to a series of skin-color-related conversations. For example, it is common to hear a preschool child describe a light-skinned Black person as White, often to the chagrin of the individual so identified. The child’s misclassification does not represent a denial of Blackness, only the child’s incomplete understanding of the adult world’s racial classifications. As preschoolers, my own children occasio
nally asked me if I was White. When I am misidentified by children as White, I usually reply matter-of-factly, “I am an African American person. We come in all shades of brown, dark brown, medium brown, and sometimes light brown—like me.”
The concept of race constancy, that one’s racial group membership is fixed and will not change, is not achieved until children are six or seven years old. (The same is true of gender constancy.)9 Just as preschool boys sometimes express a desire to have a baby like Mom when they grow up (and are dismayed when they learn they cannot), young Black children may express a desire to be White. Though such statements are certainly distressing to parents, they do not necessarily mean that the child has internalized a negative self-image. It may, however, reflect a child’s growing awareness of White privilege, conveyed through the media. For example, in a study of children’s race-related conversations, one five-year-old Black boy reportedly asked, “Do I have to be Black?” To the question of why he asked, he responded, “I want to be chief of paramedics.” His favorite TV show at the time featured paramedics and firefighters, all of whom were White.10
Though such comments by young children are not necessarily rooted in self-rejection, it is important to consider what messages children are receiving about the relative worth of light or dark skin. The societal preference for light skin and the relative advantage bestowed on light-skinned Blacks historically, often referred to as colorism, manifests itself not only in the marketplace but even within Black families.11
A particular form of internalized oppression, the skin-color prejudice found within Black communities is toxic to children and adults. A by-product of the plantation hierarchy, which privileged the light-skinned children of enslaved African women and White slave owners, a postslavery class system was created based on color. Historically the Black middle class has been a light-skinned group. But the racially mixed ancestry of many Black people can lead to a great deal of color variation among siblings and extended family members. The internalization of White-supremacist standards of beauty and the desire to maintain what little advantage can be gained in a racist system leads some families to reject darker-skinned members. Conversely, in some families, anger at White oppression and the pain of colorism can lead to resentment toward and rejection of lighter-skinned members. According to family therapist Nancy Boyd-Franklin, family attitudes about skin color are rarely discussed openly, but the messages are often clearly conveyed when some children are favored over others, or when a relative teasingly says, “Whose child are you?” to the child whose skin color varies from other family members. Boyd-Franklin writes,
All Black people, irrespective of their color, shade, darkness, or lightness, are aware from a very early age that their blackness makes them different from mainstream White America. It sets them apart from White immigrant groups who were not brought here as slaves and who have thus had a different experience in becoming assimilated into mainstream American culture. The struggle for a strong positive racial identity for young Black Afro-American children is clearly made more difficult by the realities of color prejudice.12
We need to examine not only our behavior toward our children but also the language we use around them. Is black ever used as a derogatory term to describe others, as in “that black so-and-so?” Is darkness seen as an obstacle to be overcome, as in “She’s dark, but she’s still pretty,” or avoided, as in “Stay out of the sun, you’re dark enough already?” Is lightness described as defective, as in “You need some sun, girl?” Do we sing hymns in church on Sunday proclaiming our wish to be washed “white as snow”? Even when our clear desire is to reflect positive images of Blackness to young Black children, our habits of speech may undermine our efforts unless we are intentional about examining the color-coded nature of our language.
Related to questions of color are issues of hair texture, an especially sensitive issue for Black women, young and old. I grew up with the expression “good hair.” Though no one in my household used that phrase often, I knew what it meant when I heard it. “Good hair” was straight hair, the straighter the better. I still remember the oohs and aahs of my White elementary school classmates when I arrived at school for “picture day” with my long mane of dark hair resting on my shoulders. With the miracle of a hot comb, my mother had transformed my ordinary braids into what I thought was a glamorous cascade of curls. I received many compliments that day. “How pretty you look,” the White teacher said. The truth is I looked pretty every day, but a clear message was being sent both at home and at school about what real beauty was.
I now wear my hair in its natural state of tiny curls. It has been that way since 1971. My sons are unfamiliar with Saturday afternoon trips to the beauty parlor, the smell of hot combs and chemical straighteners. Instead they grew up going with me or their father to the Black-owned barber shop where Black men and some women waited their turn for a seat in the barber’s chair. I admire their neatly trimmed heads, and they admire mine. I genuinely like the way my short hair looks and feels, and that sends an important message to my sons about how I feel about myself as a Black woman and, by extension, how I feel about them.
Though a woman’s choice to straighten her hair is not necessarily a sign of internalized oppression, it does reinforce the notion to an observant child that straight is better. In her book Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, bell hooks relates a conversation she had with a Black woman frustrated by her daughter’s desire for long blond hair, despite the family’s effort to affirm their Blackness. Observing the woman’s dark skin and straightened hair, she encouraged the mother to examine her own attitudes about skin color and hair texture to see what messages she might be communicating to her child by the way she constructed her own body image.13
Countering the images of the dominant culture is a challenge, but it can be done. Finding images that reflect the range of skin tones and hair textures in Black families is an important way to affirm a positive sense of Black identity. A wonderfully illustrated book for children that opposes the prevailing Eurocentric images of beauty is John Steptoe’s Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale.14 As the story states on the opening page, “Everyone agreed that Manyara and Nyasha are beautiful.” These lovely brown-skinned sisters have broad noses and full lips, with hair braided in short cornrows.
Though it is easier than it used to be to find children’s picture books depicting Black children authentically rather than as White children painted a darker shade, it may still be hard to find children’s books depicting Black children with very dark or very light skin. A medium brown seems to be the color of choice. Decorating one’s home with photographs of family and friends who represent a range of skin tones and hair textures is one way to begin to fill this representational gap.
“It’s That Stuff Again”: Developing a Critical Consciousness
From the time my children were infants, reading has been a shared activity in our family. I have always loved to read, and that love of books has been imparted to my children, who rarely leave home without a book to read on the way. I worked hard to find good children’s literature featuring African Americans and other children of color, but I also introduced my children to some of the books I liked when I was a child, most of which included only White children.
When Jonathan was just learning to read on his own and had advanced to “chapter books,” I introduced him to the Boxcar Children series of easy-reading mysteries, which I’d loved as a child.15 Written in the 1940s, these books feature four White children, two boys and two girls, orphaned and homeless, who lived in an abandoned railway car until they were found by their wealthy grandfather. From then on, they traveled with Grandfather and solved mysteries wherever they went.
Reading these volumes again with Jonathan, I had a new perception of them: how sexist they seemed to be. The two girls seemed to spend most of their time on these adventures cooking and cleaning and setting up house while the boys fished, paddled the canoe, and made the important discover
ies. After reading several pages of this together, I decided to say something about it to my then-seven-year-old son. I asked if he knew what sexism was. He did not, so I explained that it was when girls were treated differently than boys just because they were girls. I said that the girls in this story were being treated differently than the boys, and I pointed out some examples and discussed the unfairness of it. Jonathan wanted to continue the story, and I agreed that we could finish it, despite my new perception. What pleased and surprised me as we continued to read was that Jonathan began to spot the gender bias himself. “Hey Mom,” he interrupted me as I read on, “there’s that stuff again!”
Learning to spot “that stuff”—whether it is racist, or sexist, or classist—is an important skill for children to develop. It is as important for my Black male children to recognize sexism and other forms of oppression as it is for them to spot racism. We are better able to resist the negative impact of oppressive messages when we see them coming than when they are invisible to us. While some may think it is a burden to children to encourage this critical consciousness, I consider it a gift. Educator Janie Ward calls this child-rearing process “raising resisters.”16 And there are infinite opportunities to do so.
One such opportunity came in the form of a children’s book of Bible stories, a gift from a friend. My son and I sat down to read the story of Moses together. We hadn’t gotten very far when I said, “You know, something is bothering me about this book.” “What is it?” he replied. “You know, this story took place in Egypt, and the people in these pictures do not look much like Egyptians.” “Well, what do Egyptians look like?” he asked. We turned to a children’s world atlas and found that the photographs of the Egyptians in the atlas had noticeably darker skin and hair than the drawings in the book. Though we did not discard the book, we did discuss the discrepancy.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 14
