Stop teaching child that it’s okay to refer to someone’s skin colour

[CannotThinkOfName]

Calling someone - a random person you don’t know - black is racist. I don’t care if your personal friend or your family member or someone else you’re close to doesn’t mind being referred to like this because they’re speaking for themselves as individuals.

Pointing out someone by skin colour is rude at best and at worst a form of racism. This is because

1. Skin colour that I was born with is brown.
2. Skin colour that I was born with does not define anyone. It doesn’t define your traits, characteristics, hobbies, goals, ambitions or anything else that truly defines who a person is.
3. It’s a form of racial harassment to start bothering someone at random and bringing up their race and colour for no real reason and singling them out by it.

I’ve seen people say there’s nothing wrong with their child referring to people by skin because they are just “saying what they see”. This is wrong because as a child, I never ever saw myself as “black” or described myself “black”. This is taught as a way to refer to people, it’s not simply a child “saying what they see”.

Please stop teaching your child that it’s okay to refer to people that you don’t know this way. If you do know someone and they’ve told you to call them black then that’s their choice as an individual. They don’t speak for anyone else but themselves.

If you don’t know someone’s name, - just ask them what their name is and call them by their actual name. Not “that black girl” or “the black woman” or “that black lady”.

Ignoring skin colour and acting “colour blind” is racist.

I will teach my kids to use skin colour as a descriptor when necessary. For example, the black man with long hair next to the white woman with ginger hair. Not an issue.

I am also black.

@suburbanhousewine

Ignoring skin colour and acting “colour blind” is racist.

I will teach my kids to use skin colour as a descriptor when necessary. For example, the black man with long hair next to the white woman with ginger hair. Not an issue.

I am also black.

This is your opinion and you have the right to have it shrugs

@Tiredmum100

I was referred to as the white women all the time when I was in India as I suppose its the main feature that stood me out from everyone else.

A friend had exactly the same experience in Ghana, she was known as 'the white woman' all over the village and she was sufficiently mature not to feign offense.

@CannotThinkOfName so how would you prefer to be described /referred? It's one of the questions that has been asked before by a few posters .

[quote AccidentallyOnPurpose]@CannotThinkOfName so how would you prefer to be described /referred? It's one of the questions that has been asked before by a few posters .

[/quote]
By my name like I said in the first post in this thread. I’ve personally never been in a situation where my race needed to be mentioned so I can’t relate to people using the police report example.

@CoolOven

I'd just describe you as the aggressive woman with the massive chip on her shoulder to be honest

Innit

Mmm-hmm.

Asians are not black but all Africans are? Why?
Because most black Africans are black but Asians look Asian and not black. Often bone structure. I've been taken for Chinese because of high cheekbones. I'm not at all. I'm totally Yorkshire Anglo Saxon from way back. Or maybe my gran had a fling with Ah Sing. Who knows?

@istherelifeafter40

Why mention Malawi if we are talking about Britain with minority Black population and a history of slavery?

Is this aimed at me? Not sure what your point is?

@Goldbar

I agree with you OP, it's othering to refer to people as "black" because it makes their race their predominant characteristic and sets them aside from others on the basis of it. Also, I can't ever imagine referring to someone as "brown"... that would just be so rude . Why is black different?

That said, my DC did go though a stage of being fascinated by different skin colours when they were 2 (their childminder was Asian). They used to point people out on the bus and it was mortifying . Luckily it didn't last long.

When she was in Kindergarten my daughter used to refer to the staff as the tall lady, the small lady, the bown lady etc, never by name. We once met one of the staff in the supermarket and she excitedly pointed to her and said It's the brown lady! I later asked why she was called the brown lady, I'd assumed she was referring to the West Indian woman but apparently it was because this lady always wore a brown overall of course!

Or maybe my gran had a fling with Ah Sing. Who knows?

And before I'm accused of being racist, that's a poetic reference. As some will recognise

*When he finally mentioned that she was black, I knew exactly who he meant, as she was the only black lady in the team

Genuine question, promise I am just trying to understand, would people consider that offensive?*

I’m white so it’s not up to me to say whether I think it’s offensive or not, but what strikes me here is that your colleague was immediately recognisable from the description ‘black’ precisely because she’s the only black person there, which is a situation most white people rarely have to face in the UK, or at least not with any regularity. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been the only, or one of few, white people in a room in this country. So yes, while it would make sense for someone to describe me as ‘the white woman’ in such a scenario, that description isn’t one that I hear routinely applied to myself, whereas your black colleague probably gets described as ‘the black woman’ or words to that effect quite often.

If the person your colleague was trying to describe had been white, in a room full of white people, then he would have to have found some other way to describe her other than by her skin colour.

So my take on it is that while it may or may not be offensive to describe your colleague like that (again, not for me to say), it does demonstrate how NOT having your skin colour routinely used as the primary distinctive feature people use when describing you is a pretty good example of white privilege, and one that many of us don’t even realise we have.

I don’t think we all need to jump through hoops and tie ourselves in knots to describe people using everything but their skin colour, like some of the more facetious examples here, but I do think it’s something we can all reflect on and think about WHY some people have to hear their skin colour mentioned constantly while others pretty much never do.

Feck. I meant to say Ah Sin

I wonder why being singled out as a more privileged skin colour didn't cause offense? 🤔 Maturity has nothing to do with it.

quote fail

I don’t think it’s racist to make observations. We shouldn’t pretend we can’t see race, we do.

By my name like I said in the first post in this thread. I’ve personally never been in a situation where my race needed to be mentioned so I can’t relate to people using the police report example.

But what if someone doesn't know your name? Or if we're referring to a collective? People of colour? BAME? People of African descent?

You're asking us to stop using black because you find it offensive, which is fair enough, you need to offer an alternative though.

2x quote fail?

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

By my name like I said in the first post in this thread. I’ve personally never been in a situation where my race needed to be mentioned so I can’t relate to people using the police report example.

But what if someone doesn't know your name? Or if we're referring to a collective? People of colour? BAME? People of African descent?

You're asking us to stop using black because you find it offensive, which is fair enough, you need to offer an alternative though.

How do you describe someone of the same skin colour? Do that.

If you’re not black yourself, you don’t have any right to tell someone what’s racist or not because you’re not at the receiving end of it.

What a nonsensical statement, only black people can define racist? That's arrogantly dismissing a very large number of other ethnicities, colours etc. What makes being black more special than being Native American, Maori, Indian etc etc?
When my 7 year old grandson was asked outside school What have you done today? he replied We're doing black people, don't know why, they're no different than anyone else are they? It was Black History month apparently.

I think if you live in a country that is predominantly white you would hear that descriptor often as would a white person in another country. I am sure the red headed person gets their hair used a default descriptor all the time too. I guess it’s the quickest and laziest way to describe someone and the most obvious features are what we tend to use. In America where actually the population is very very mixed I do wonder what they use to describe colleagues on a team with a more even balance of different people.

You speak for no one.

I get what you’re saying. Why make reference to skin colour unless it is absolutely relevant or necessary. You wouldn’t say “ I was having a conversation with a white lady at the bus stop so why say I was having a conversation with a black lady”.

@Smallkeys

I think if you live in a country that is predominantly white you would hear that descriptor often as would a white person in another country. I am sure the red headed person gets their hair used a default descriptor all the time too. I guess it’s the quickest and laziest way to describe someone and the most obvious features are what we tend to use. In America where actually the population is very very mixed I do wonder what they use to describe colleagues on a team with a more even balance of different people.

@Smallkeys People say African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Latino/Latina/LatinX/Hispanic, white, Black. The language is constantly changing.

Opinion is the lowest form of knowledge.
You're entitled to your opinion OP but that's all it I'd. Repeating it over and over doesn't mean anything and you can't see anyone else's point of view so why start the thread.

It's not a discussion if you just keep repeating yourself.

You wouldn’t say “ I was having a conversation with a white lady at the bus stop so why say I was having a conversation with a black lady”
In that scenario I doubt anybody would. It's not relevant.