To think my aunt's comment is racist?

[Ironfloor]

The other day, DD (3) and I were skyping my parents (who live in another country) and my aunt also happened to be there. We had gifted DD with a globe for her birthday and she was very excited about her newly acquired knowledge of the different countries. So my parents named some countries and asked her to point them out on the globe. DD did so and then continued to talk about Africa, which is her favourite continent at the moment. She pretended to have visits Africa and was talking about all the sights and sounds she saw there (most of it were made up, of course). Then my aunt asked her 'when you visited Africa, did you see a lot of black peoples?'. My immediate reaction was 'WTAF'. Please tell me I'm not BU in thinking that this was an incredibly racist comment?

Visits = visited

I think you're overreacting.

Yabu.

YABU.

Thanks. It's always nice to see things from a different perspective.

I wouldn't say it was incredibly racist, it's not like she used a racist term.

id think it was a weird comment that youd hear a thick person ask. Not racist in itself though

Well a lot of black people do live in Africa?

Do you live quite a monocultural area where non white people are far and few between hence why she'd think it noteworthy?

YABU. What would you expect to see in Africa?

She was just making conversation, OP.

get a grip and find something more reasonable to be offended about.

YANBU. Not racist but weird. If your DD was talking about Sweden would your aunt have said ''when you visited Sweden, did you see a lot of white people?'

No, it wasn't "incredibly racist" to suggest there may be a lot of black people in Africa...

It was a weird (and pretty stupid) thing to say, especially to a three year old, but not inherently racist.

I don't know, I just felt uncomfortable because it implies that black people live only in Africa and how would I explain to DD that there are black people living all over the world, not just Africa? And also, there are non black peoples living in Africa as well? But I guess I was overreacting. Thanks for your opinions.

How is that racist ? A daft question yes, but racist? Nope

I don't think it implies that only black people live in Africa...

*tha black people only live in Africa sorry

It's an incredibly silly question, but how many of those do you get in a day?

I don't think it's racist. The demographic profile of sub-Saharan Africa is quite different to that of the UK, and I think one of the things a child visiting Africa would notice was that a far higher proportion of the population is black than is the case in the UK - although of course, there are significant black communities in the UK and significant white commmunities in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. (Possibly elsewhere - I'm rubbish at geography!)

It's not racist ..there are quite alot of black people in Africa...and you know what...thats cool..it like saying when she visited Iceland there were quite a few blondes...

It's moronic but not racist (though clearly Aunt is thinking Africa = black people).

Put another way, if Aunt had said, "Did you see lots of wild animals / lions?" it would have been equally stereotypical but probably more on a 3 y.o.'s wavelength!

(I speak as a South African whose Race-O-Meter is turned up to 11.)

Or, to give you another example, when my DP met my dad he tried to make conversation by asking about the North African country dad was working in, and said, "So, the black people there... how black are they?"

I wanted to crawl into the earth at that point, but it was stupidity rather than anything worse.

Was she talking about Darkest Africa?

If I was making small talk with a 3-year-old about a continent neither of us had visited, I'd probably end up saying something similar at some point TBH.

If we were talking about India, I'd probably talk about tigers, elephants, spicy food and ladies in sarees. If we were talking about Antarctica, I'd probably talk about snow, penguins, polar bears and eskimos.

It's just something significant that makes it different from where you live.