Do I challenge how my DS described this boy?

[RickyZoom]

My DS is 4 and will make friends with anyone wherever we go.
Recently we went to an playground and he made friends with a boy around his age. When asking him if he enjoyed his day he said "yes, first I had an ice cream, then I played with the black boy." Now AIBU just to let this description pass as a 4 year old describing what someone looks like, the same as if he was telling me his hair colour or should I be starting to discuss what is and isn't appropriate ways to describe people. Or am I worrying about nothing?

Judging by a lot of the answers on here, BLM needs to change it's name. My 3 year old GC would use black, because we have African friends who identify as Black. My half sister identifies as a woman of colour. I bought my friends DD brown/black dolls. When she opened them, her Mum referred to them as black (and was pleased with them). She describes other friends as black. For them it isn't about the actual colour, but identifying with black African culture and heritage.

Agree with PPs that it is interesting he used 'black' rather than 'brown'. Perhaps he and the child had a conversation about his skin colour.

I have a 5yo dgs, when out playing in the park he will invariably 'team up' with other kids, when you ask if he has had a nice time he will usually say that he has got a 'new best friend', the answer to 'oh, what is his name' is always met with 'I dont know'. Children are far to busy to worry about social niceities like introducing themselves - I would say that so long as they are pleased to play with each other and have a fun time then there is no racial problem and the child is just describing what he saw, I think I would proberbly have changed the discription to 'oh, you mean the little boy in the blue jumper' and just keep doing that when race is used as a discription.

just to lighten the conversation a little, a few weeks ago my dd asked dgs about his day at school, its a large inner city - 'we had a good game with my friends but we didnt play with people who were the wrong colour' horrified dd started explaining why we play with anyone and we must not worry about skin colour etc, 'no mummy, it was the red team, we were in yellow'

@WeatherwaxOn

I have a number of friends who are not white. One of them is overweight (serious health issues) and walks with aids. She describes herself as "fat, black and disabled". I have had discussions with other friends and they prefer "black" to "person of colour'. If I didn't know someone then I would describe them as simply as possible, "The white man with a beard", "The mixed race woman", etc.

You routinely describe people as white?

That’s very unusual.

I’ve never, ever heard a white person say ‘the white person over there’.

As a child I lived in rural Worcestershire. When I was 6 or 7, in around 1950 or thereabouts, mum took me on a bus to Birmingham.
“Ooh Look there’s a black man! “ I said loudly only ever having seen white people.
Mum was ultra embarrassed “He’s not a black man, dear, he’s a coloured gentleman’”. It was many a year before I stopped using this description.
.

If he's trying to tell you which child, and there was one black child, why shouldn't he use that to let you know who he was playing with? I actually don't understand why we can't do the same as adults without being corrected. It's no different to saying the blonde one or the tall one.

It's not racist to make an observation. What is racist is if you treat people different based on their colour - which obviously your boy wasn't, as they were happily playing!

We are a mixed race family, all three of us. When we lived in london my child never noticed skin colour as where we lived was extremely multicultural. The majority of the playmates were non white. Now we have moved to a predominantly white area he has now noticed skin colour and talks about his friends with different colour skin as they stand out as a very small minority. As he has black grandparents on both sides I tend to say, yes the said child looks like grandad and most people in the world have brown skin. I do feel uncomfortable that they now comment on skin colour now but I'm not sure how to handle it either. When I was growing up my non white features were commented on all the time and I dont want my child to ' other ' other children and make them feel different. It's really hard.

I don't think saying "black" is racist. People say white. But most of us aren't really white are we? More beige, dusty pink etc.

So I'd suggest that OP tells her son it's not nice to describe people using their skin colour and he should choose something else.

Why is that not nice? Is there something inherently unpalatable about mentioning certain skin colours?

If the OP's DS is calling the other boy "black" because he has identified that this is the boy's ethnic origin (which is a whole other thread about how you can't do this anyway just by looking at someone and it seems unlikely that this would have featured in a playground conversation between 2 young children) then this is acceptable. Calling him "black" just because it's his skin colour is not acceptable, because if it was it would also be ok to describe someone as brown, coloured, chocolate, yellow, beige just because it was their skin colour.

I agree there's something jarringly othering about using "black boy" as a descriptor in this context, though in a 4 year old I don't know that I'd address it directly, but there's nothing weird about a 4 year old knowing the concept of black as a race descriptor! Schools and nurseries learn black history from reception age.

I certainly wouldn’t make a Thing of it at 4.
Racist attitudes are IMO mostly picked up from what they hear at home. I’m sure your own attitudes will be by far the biggest influence.

It was years ago, and not in the U.K., but I still remember being shocked at hearing sisters of no more than 7 or 8, describing another girl as ‘Eurasian’, and their tone definitely implying that it was inferior.

My own dd of about the same age was a close friend of the girl in question - she’d certainly never heard the term and such attitudes wouldn’t have entered her head.
I knew the sisters’ parents (not Brits) and although it wasn’t overt, it didn’t take a genius to work out from the odd comment or tone that they had decidedly racist tendencies.

I should encourage him to find out his playmate's names, my kids will play for hours with other kids at the park and when I ask them what their names were I get "dunno"

My children did this, I think I heard or read somewhere at the time that this is pretty normal for a lot of children, and the whole introducing ourselves name first doesn't come naturally to a lot of them so they don't think to ask. My DD1 had this thing for ages where she'd describe, particularly other girls, with a lot of detail about their hair but names or anything beyond that seemed to be a blur to her.

With a child that young, I'd probably encourage them to describe them more than that in a "Oh, and what was this boy like, what did you enjoy doing together" way to expand and find other ways to discuss him beyond him being black, but I wouldn't correct or make it seem like he'd picked the wrong or a bad word, because it isn't, it's just helping them work that there is more than that.

'I wouldn't like my son to be referred to as "the black boy" because no other child's skintone would be used as their sole descriptor"

"I’ve never, ever heard a white person say ‘the white person over there’."

If there were 6 black people and one white person stood in a group, it would be perfectly acceptable to say this.

It isn't an insult. There is no need for anyone to be offended whichever way around it is.

As for the posters wondering how a 4 year old would know to describe a person as black. The Black Lives Matter campaign has been so predominant in the news and especially sport that I would be surprised if any child over 3 was unaware of this and not know what a black person looks like.

I used to interview children as part of my job. If I was asking a child to describe another person they would only ever mention the skin colour if it was different from their own. That was the same for children of all ethnicities.

So I got a phone call today because my 4.5 year old keeps getting 2 boys names confused in his bubble and one raised it and my son said well you both look the same 😬. My son is 3/4 black and the other 2 boys are white with blond hair.

@OverTheRainbow88

So I got a phone call today because my 4.5 year old keeps getting 2 boys names confused in his bubble and one raised it and my son said well you both look the same 😬. My son is 3/4 black and the other 2 boys are white with blond hair.

Who called you?

The pre school team leader

So I got a phone call today because my 4.5 year old keeps getting 2 boys names confused in his bubble and one raised it and my son said well you both look the same 😬. My son is 3/4 black and the other 2 boys are white with blond hair.

And she phoned you to say what?

Wouldn't bother me.

There's 3 people with my name in my office. Blonde Joris, Old Joris and me, Big Joris. I'm taller than most men and lift weights.

Obviously my real name isn't Joris 😂

The school I used to work in had 2 boys in Reception with the same name- let's say they were called Tom. Children would refer to them as White Tom and Brown Tom.

@katy1213

Maybe the black boy went home and said he played with the white boy.

Unlikely.

@Veryverycalmnow

The school I used to work in had 2 boys in Reception with the same name- let's say they were called Tom. Children would refer to them as White Tom and Brown Tom.

And that went unchecked, did it?

I am staggered that fully grown adults don't know the difference between someone with brown and someone with black skin.

@OverTheRainbow88

The pre school team leader

I don't believe it.