to be upset at racism accusation due to dd1's comment in town.

[PrincessScrumpy]

dd1 is 3 and said loudly "look mummy that lady has a chocolate face." The woman heard and said " nice to see you training her to be racist already!" I was really shocked. dd didn't mean offence it was an observation that her skin colour was the same as chocolate. She's only met a few people from other races due to us living in the West Country but I've always explained skin colour in the same way as hair and eye colour being different.

She did say it once before about Tiger Woods on TV but I decided to ignore it and not make an issue. dd now is asking what racist is and I don't think a 3yo needs to know - they don't see colour as a issue or feel superior etc. Left me shaken and actally quite cross. I really think the lady was being oversensitive.

Fag, Yid, Wog and Spastic are all derogatory words no matter what context they are used in.

The word chocolate is not a word that is derogatory in itself. So it's not the same.

The words frog, pig, cow and bitch can all be used in derogatory ways quite easily, and can be very offensive, but that does not mean that they are offensive words.

Something can still be offensive without the child being fucking racist. Jesus Christ.

My child may have shyed away from an adult in a wheelchair screaming, doesn't mean he/she is disablist.

Of course when a child says chocolate face they need correcting, but get real people.

I think the OP didn't have time to correct the child as the woman stepped in right away to call her racist, which is why OP feels defensive.

Yet again I am stunned and shocked at some of the opinions on an MN thread about race.

Hopefully the OP's absense means she is taking time to explain to her dd that describing someone as chocolate face is not acceptable and why.

Lets be clear if the OP hadn't ignored it the first time her daughter said it then this situation probably wouldn't have happened and the lady who may or may not have over reacted wouldn't have had her feelings hurt or felt offended.

Off topic but i was told by an Indian guy once to please not use the word 'ethnic' as it is offensive because it means 'godless'. Anyone else heard that before?

If my child called someone a wog, fag or yid then of course I would be demanding to find out where the hell they had learnt it! However, can you not see that 'chocolate face' is not the same because she was describing the lady's face in that way because it is the same colour? It is not racist, it is an observation on the child's part.

It does not mean that it is ok for a child to call someone that, but I think that the lady in question was wrong to immediately accuse the OP of teaching her child to be racist.

Capricorn 76 - your posts are fantastic, whether or not those who are blinded by their own sanctimoniousness will be able to engage with them.

I grew up in a rural county in America that actually had a law on the statute books banning African Amercans from the city limits of the county town until it was superseded by civil rights laws in the early 1970's. Believe me, when I was 3, I understood that some people were more "important" than others because of the colour of their skin even when no one had to directly tell me so.

Three most definitely is NOT too young to engage a child in discussions about difference-not-meaning-bad-scary-or-less-important, whether that applies to sex, ethnicity, religion, disability or any other factor. If you or any other parent choose not to have those conversations because you think they are too young, you find it uncomfortable or don't know how to go about it, imho, it's the same as saying you don't think keeping your child from growing into a bigot is important. I actually sense from this thread that some parents would be quite pleased if their children DID grow up that way.

I've said it before, but if a person stomps on your foot by accident, not intending to hurt you, it will still hurt the same as if they meant to do it. One can hurt someone else by saying something out of ignorance, but that doesn't excuse it. If you then try to justify what you've done and minimise the pain you've caused someone else, well in my book that starts to cross from "I didn't know it was hurtful," to "I don't care if it hurt you, that's your problem."

I live in a white area now. All the nursery's, playgroups have diversity dolls and teach about diversity. We had the diversity dolls to stay ALL weekend once and took them out and about with us everywhere BUT it didn't stop my DS pointing at a black person went we went to the BIG city and saying "Why is that person brown?". Because at the end of the day children are curious. He wasn't making a racist comment however at that point as a parent it was my duty to say that some people have different colour skins and it is very rude to point and comment on people in public. At which point he said "What's public?" Arghhhhhhh........"Well....it's...."

Like other posters I am wondering about OP's reaction, but that might be about her social skills rather than anything else.

Calma, from a random etymology site:

Ethnic, late 14c., Scottish, "heathen, pagan," and having that sense first in English; as an adj. from late 15c. from L. ethnicus, Gk. ethnikos, from ethnos "band of people living together, nation, people," prop. ?people of one's own kind,? from PIE swedh-no-, suffixed form of base s(w)e- (see idiom). In Septuagint, Gk. ta ethne translates Heb. goyim, pl. of goy "nation," especially of non-Israelites, hence "Gentile nation." Sense of "peculiar to a race or nation" is attested from 1851, a return to the word's original meaning; that of "different cultural groups" is 1935; and that of "racial, cultural or national minority group" is Amer.Eng. 1945; ethnic cleansing is attested from 1991.

So it would seem as if the word was used for a while to mean godless, but it then returned to its original meaning over 150 years ago. Interesting, though.

I don't think my children would use any of those terms Capricorn because where would they hear them? Those are derogatory name-calling. In the OP, however, it's far more likely that the child made a link between something she knew 'chocolate' and the colour of the lady which was unusual to her. It's not derogatory name-calling IMO because it is unintentional, but it is upsetting to the person (e.g. I have a fat face and a small child once asked me if I was eating bananas all the time, upon which I had to reply that no, I just had chubby cheeks!) I would teach the child not to say things that might upset people, and that includes commenting on colour.

Samstown, a faggot is a kind of meatball thing. A fairy is a pretty winged pixie sort of creature. So, like chocolate, those words can be used to mean non-offensive, even nice things. That doesn't mean those words can't be experienced as hurtful when used to point out their difference to the "norm."

Samstown, "Ethnic" is an adjective. Most of the time when it's used as a noun, it's used in a negative, perjorative sense as in, "It was an ethnic who did such and such." It could also be that the word sounds similar to "godless" in a different language.

I'm stunned that people on here have said that calling someone 'chocolate face' is not offensive/racist because chocolate is nice. Ok, I get that it came out of a three year old, but I feel really uncomfortable with this thread.

So glad Hully, Por, SQ and others have been so vocal with challenging this. for you.

The comment, "that lady has a chocolate face" is racist.

The child was not racist.

There is a difference.

Racism is deliberately implied or expressed discrimination or derogatory remark based on the race or ethnicity of a person.

So the child was not deliberate in her comment so not racist. If she had been older and the comment was deliberately derogatory then it would have been.

Maybe?

@Calma I have not heard 'ethnic' as being Godless but I do often find the term 'ethnic' makes me feel uncomfortable on it's own as it's often used as part of an insult e.g. 'there are too many ethnic's (usually pronounced effniks) here'. It also ignores the fact that white people also have their own ethnicities and implies white is 'normal' by default and everyone else is abnormal or other. The term when used in it's proper context i.e. 'ethnic minority' is okay if that makes any sense.

If it makes some of the 'PC gawn mad' brigade feel better I do know a black guy who was given a hiding by his dad for using the term 'honky' when he was a kid (in the early 80s when you were allowed to beat kids). If your kid says something rude, you stamp it out first time. If my DD called a white person an albino (although she's 3/4 white herself and looks Southern European) or an Asian person 'yellow face' there would be no way I would be ignoring it.

YANBU - the woman over reacted. It has been said many times but the child is 3 and the woman should have taken that into account. Presumably she did have children herself or she would have remembered that remarks that make a parent cringe can have come out of nowhere.

Just as an aside, did the people who said that the OP should have told her child about racism when her DD made the initial remark about Tiger Woods not read the bit that it was said that it was when Tiger Woods was in the news for having an affair? That was well over a year ago - the child would probably have been under 2. Good luck to you if you think you can tell a toddler that age about an abstract concept like racism, even if it were a good idea but I think the OP ignoring it then it not surprising or even wrong if it was a one off at that time given that children tend to repeat things that get a reaction at that age.

Merci, Hully.

My observation is how different metropolitan areas are from more rural areas in the UK.

I live in London and at one point my dd was the only white child in her nursery class. I didn't have a problem with this AT ALL, by the way, but it does go to show just how diverse most of London is. As a result, my kids don't bat an eye at all the many skin colours they come across.

I'm always struck by how white it is in other parts of the country and I can imagine that a young child from the west country would find a black person worthy of comment.

Its shame that the woman overheard your DD, but use it as a learning experience. As well as explaining about the 'everyone comes in different shapes, sizes and colours' etc, I would reinforce this with a message that its never nice to make personal comments about people in the street

I can't help thinking that if "look mummy that lady has a chocolate face." had been immediately followed up with an appropriate explanation by OP then the woman wouldn't have taken offence and we wouldn't have had this thread.

The fact is, that in Employment Law , intention is not necesarily one of the requirements for racial discrimination. If an employee says to a black female 'Hello, my little chocoate face', the recepient may be able to cite this as an example of racial discrimination, despite the fact that the remark was not meant to be 'racist'
The black woman was clearly offended and the OP, should be concentrating on is educating her child about manners and respect for others.

A three year old may well draw on inappropriate thi gs to explain the world around them. My dd decided aged 4 that she did not like a particular girl because she had curly hair. So my job is to teach my child about making comments and comparisons about people and ensure as much as I can that my child does not, however unintentionally, upset or offend strangers.

So a small child should have lots of conversations about how we all look different.

But if our child says something it is up to us to apologise and correct.

The nub seems to be the ops reaction and her description of events leaves this ambiguous. She should have corrected her child, she ideally should have apologized.
To decide quite randomly that personal comments are ok if we see them as benign is odd.

But then I am a big fucking racist so I may be biased.

chocoate

But surely as adults if a young child says something like that we as adults should 'jump' on it straight away, isn't it about educating our children, and don't we start that from day one?