To be worried about dd1 being the only non white in her class

[Rory786]

We moved from multicultural London to a very rural village. DD1 (4yrs) will be in a village school, and one of 8 pupils in her class. We went to visit and we got a lot of stares.
AIBU to be worried for her?
She will have two younger sisters joining eventually (but they are 20 months and 7 months now)

Kelly Holmes, mixed race growing up in an all-white part of Kent, used to have the other children form a circle around her and sing the Boney M song "Brown Girl in the Ring."

She loved it.

What she actually wrote in her autobiography was this:

"Whenever we sang "Brown Girl in the Ring" at school, I was always the one who ended up in the middle of the circle! I just thought I must be the best and loved being the centre of attention ..."

Sounds like she just put a very positive spin on it - there's no way of knowing what the other girls were thinking.

Sounds like she just put a very positive spin on it - there's no way of knowing what the other girls were thinking.

Correct, nor should anyone be entitled to know what someone else is thinking. As yet there is still no thought police.

Are you implying that Kelly Holmes was so stupid she couldn't realise she was being teased? Surely, if you can take something two ways you would take it the positive way?

Perhaps that is why she is an amazing successful athlete and you are sitting trying to find negativity in a situation that was not even your own experience and the person involved is telling you there was no problem.

Sounds like she just put a very positive spin on it - there's no way of knowing what the other girls were thinking.

They wouldn't have been thinking anything apart from the fact that it was okay to sing "brown girl in the ring" because it was a Boney M song and it was in the charts. If there was anything malicious about it I'm sure that Kelley Holmes would have realised it because it wouldn't have been the only incident.

I don't think you need to worry. I'm white, and grew up in a majority white area. One of my friends at primary school was black - she'd moved from London during primary school. I asked her about racism (we went to the same secondary school too; I'm not claiming to be exceptionally sensitive!) and she said she'd experienced more racism in London - there she'd been one of several black children at school, and they were perceived as a group with certain stereotypes. At my school, where the number of non-white children could have been counted on one hand, she was an individual who happened to be black; there wasn't the same negative stereotyping. Hope that helps!

You should be careful not to attribute racism to anything a 4 year old will say. They have a lot of curiosity and no filters.

Honestly I wouldn't worry too much, I remember last year my 5 year old was talking about two Adams in his class, He differentiated by calling them Adam with the brown hair and Adam with the red hair all year long, It was only at the end of year play that I noticed that Adam with the red hair had a wheelchair.
Kids genuinely don't see difference especially at that age, People are just what they are...

I'm not saying Kelly Holmes didn't realise they may have been teasing her nor understand that she was putting a positive spin on it.

I'm just disagreeing with the poster who said "She loved it." as if that were a fact.

I remember the first non white person I saw, I was about seven when a black family moved to our area. Although the children were not in my class they were the talk of the school, much of it about their skin colour. Most of it wasn't racist, just curious, some of it was though (working class northern town, 1970s) this would have come from the parents. The children were also triplets, we'd never seen triplets before either. I think they quite soon settled in and were busy playing football in the playground. I think they did get racist taunts, but they also had good friends around them to stick up for them, I imagine this probably helped them cope more than any adult intervention would have.

Actually they weren't the only non white people we knew. The doctor and dentist were both Indian, they kind of didn't count though, iyswim, they would both have been seen as 'posh', we would never mix with them, and class was a much bigger divide than race (I think it still is). The children at the school were one of us though.

I imagine in 2016 most people's attitudes have changed, I'm sure your child will still get as much curiosity from the other children, this might be a little hard for her, I think actual racism will be much less though. If she is still pre-school age I'd try to take her to playgroups and stuff like that were she might meet children who will be going to school with her, try to make some friends for her. I'd also try to remember that most people in the world are lovely.

When I was at primary there was only one non white child in the whole school and he was in my class, I had never noticed until I went to secondary and it was very multicultural

"Whenever we sang "Brown Girl in the Ring" at school, I was always the one who ended up in the middle of the circle! I just thought I must be the best and loved being the centre of attention ..."

Her quote said she loved it.

Don't focus on the kids....check out the parents. You'll soon get an idea of how welcoming, open minded etc people are.

Bigoted behaviour is driven by many factors (poverty being one of them). There are lots of ethnic minorities in the North East but prejudice and divisions are rife. In some ways being the only 'foreigner' can make you less 'threatening'.

My child goes to a tiny village school in a rural area. There is a non white boy at the school, who is educated at home on a Friday.

the children are completely accepting and he's singled out only to talk about how good he is at football.

I think as some pps have said, sometimes these small rural places are much more accepting than supposedly multicultural ones.

The school also looks outwards much more than I had expected, with lots of discussion about the world, the refugees, food banks and different cultures,

TBH, I think I am more of an outsider because we moved here and I have a different type of job to most of the other parents.

So I really wouldn't worry too much 😊

Amaried my DS was 4 when he told me about a little boy in his class who 'is allowed to bring his bicycle to school'. Yep. That kid was in a wheelchair too. I liked that.

My DS is in a little primary school, mostly white kids. But he was trying to tell me about his new best friend and saying he is the William with dark hair, not the William with blonde hair. His friend is Vietnamese, it turns out, but he just saw it as a different hair colour.

I agree though with someone upthread who said check out the reactions of the parents though- it is the parents who teach prejudice.

DH grew up in a small town where he was one of only two non white families and experienced a lot of racist bullying, but that was in the 80's, hopefully society has moved on since then.

I think the trick is to help you DD see her skin colour as just as beautiful and valid as everyone else's, which could be trickier in a less mixed school. I felt quite sad yesterday when my 5yo DD who is mixed race was drawing a princess and asked me to help her find the 'princess skin colour pen', I tried giving her a brown pen, she said 'no princesses are ham coloured like you' (I am white, I flatter myself not ham coloured though!). The she said she wished she looked like a princess, of course I explained there are royalty all over the world with all different skin tones, I don't think she believed me though.

Small village schools are wonderful - little gems - and I am delighted that your DD will be a pupil at one. She is a lucky girl. I am governor at one and there have over the years been several occasions when there has been one child who is "different" through race, colour or culture. In every case they have settled in fine, rapidly becoming a happy part of the school and the parents welcomed into the school community. A small school is great in this situation as any hint of isolation or bullying is very out in the open and can be nipped in the bud - but I very much doubt whether it will arise.

I can understand why you might have bit of anxiety about this, but I really do think it is unfounded. I am sure she will settle in and have a brilliant time.

sansXsouci that made me sad - Disney princesses have a long way to go to even the balance. However you can tell your Dd that my (white) Dd always makes the princess brown because it is the most beautiful in her opinion!

Rhonda, "Brown Girl in the Ring" was one of the eight records that Kelly Holmes selected for her hypothetical desert island.

She likes the song, and the memories associated with it.

Kids don't have prejudice any more than they have religion. They are taught both. They notice difference but are not prejudiced unless taught to be.

sasha, I read the post from which I quoted, thanks.

gravy, yes I also quoted the same from her autobiography

I'm sorry if I missed this but is your DD the only non-white person in your family too or are you all/some of you at home non-white also?

If she has family to go back to at home daily then that will mean that, even though she is surrounded by people who don't look like her, she will have people at home who look like her, making her feel more "normal". One big risk with children growing up in racial isolation is that they think there is something wrong with their hair/skin and no amount of reassurance can make the surrounding people look like you and give you that physical reassurance. This is what adults who have grown up like this say - this isn't me saying that. Children can feel they are actually deformed for this reason.

Also, don't underestimate the really annoying "being stared at" and "ooh you're so special" ALL THE TIME. Being singled out in a positive way is wearing too. Again, adults who've grown up like this say this, and from a personal point of view I've lived somewhere (as an adult) where I was the only white person in a town of several thousand and it's just tedious to be pointed out/have people ask odd questions all the time. And that's as an adult with the mental resources to deal with it - you're talking about a small child.

My DC are adopted and one of them is not white. We live in a relatively mixed town in the NW of England and the school is 25% not White British (though some of those who aren't, are Eastern European/Mediterranean etc so are White of course). But at school not everyone looks like us (me, DH and the other DC), some of them look like my DC. So there are people who look like them so that they do not feel "weird".

We obviously would not live anywhere where our DC would have racist remarks directed at them (as far as you can avoid this altogether - we also need to make sure we prepare our DC for things like 'your skin is dirty' and make sure they know to tell us about anything that makes them uncomfortable), but we also wouldn't live anywhere that our DC was in a minority of one as that is just not fair on them.

You are just going to have to suck it and see, I'm afraid. Small schools are usually more accepting of difference, once they get to know you, because they are more family like. There isn't much cliquey-ness because there aren't enough kids to leave any out!

My DS was the only white kid in his year, there was a little bit of bother, but nothing actually aimed at him. I was a bit when he came home with an urban/Jamaicanish accent.

I actually heard myself saying 'It's a barnarnar, darling.'

I got over it.

Just on the subject of 'ethnic' people, this language really bothers me. Everyone has an ethnic origin and I just find it really odd and quite offensive that certain people are referred to as 'ethnic'. The PP who referred to 'ethnic children' clearly didn't mean to offend and I quite liked the post otherwise but I thinks it's really important to understand that many people don't like this kind of language as it seems to suggest that there is 'normal', on the one hand, and then 'ethnic' on the other. Sorry for the rant but words do matter

Gaspard It is posts like yours that make me apprehensive to share my opinion on a subject like this. Which is sad because I feel like OP took heart from me sharing my experiences.

There is one black little boy in my 4 year old sons class and I dont think there has been anything unpleasant. We did see a black man in our village and he informed him he looked like his friend and the man just laughed and said hed have to look out for the handsome little boy then and now my son says his friend is handsome! I think at 4 they are just curious. Its a good time to put in positive attitudes!

SheepyFun see that's funny. Leaving London has made me see far more racism. It's hidden but it's there. People ignoring non white people or being actively surprised they are educated. I was surprised at how ignorant people who lived in cities and big towns outside London could be.
Although that could be dependent where you lived in London as there are parts of South London that I've been told are very racist but that's not my experience of North and central London.