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”.

Interesting first post.
I’ll be interested to hear the thoughts of other black MNers.

I also feel when a small child describes a man or lady as black lady or black man the racism is already had an imput on them from their parents ofcourse. Children aren't born racist it's their parents that make them believe it ok. Children are so impressionable.

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.

What a ridiculous thread

@Coldilox

As a police officer I have to take descriptions or describe people all the time. I would be pretty snookered if I wasn’t allowed to refer to race

Exactly this. Imagine having to describe someone and using everything other than skin colour because some people say it’s racist.

I assume in your job, if something happened and the public had to describe a quick snap shit of someone they vaguely seen, skin colour would be easily distinguishable, whether it was a white I’d black person. Guessing age/height/eye colour wouldn’t be tricky.

Sometimes there’s no way to avoid it

@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.

As above, sometimes it is just a descriptor!

@themuttsnutts

Race exists as a concept, but is something that has been socially constructed, rather than a biological category. It is something that has been invented by peoples desire categorise.

People from certain parts of the world are more likely to have certain types of characteristics, but there is no gene which codes for 'race'.

shot

or

would

I’ve never heard someone being described as white in a day to day situation. Whiteness is something that’s never used as a descriptor

The police use "IC1 male / female" to refer to a white man or woman in their descriptions.

I hate predictive text 🙄🙄

@Smeds

Interesting. My DD is 6 and when she first got a best friend at school last year, she described her to me. "Black hair with colourful beads in and dark skin" were the descriptors she used. That seems like an appropriate way for a child with no concept of race or ethicity to describe someone. Would you have an issue with this OP or is that ok? Genuine question.

No I don’t have an issue with that. I have an issue with othering like someone else mentioned in this thread and I feel that it’s rude.

I’m assuming op you would think a black child describing herself or indeed a black sibling would be being racist ? Internalised?

Whiteness is something that’s never used as a descriptor
It is in all the official forms I've ever filled in. White British. Tick

Children do say what they see and would typically say brown or dark (or variations of it) unless the person's skin colour is dark enough that the child actually sees black (the colour, not the race) or the child sees anything darker than tan as black (again, the colour, not the race) or the child is colour-blind and any brown skin looks black to them. In that case, they'd say black. I think it isn't racist to use skin colour that way as a descriptor. @Smeds

I think what the OP could be saying [I could be wrong] is that children are taught to say Black (the race, not the skin colour] when they see a person with brown skin and this is what is racist.

@CannotThinkOfName

“I do not think that referring to someone's skin colour is racist”.

It’s racist. It’s just that it’s a form of racism that has been normalised. People need to quit it.

Oh stop it. Don't be so silly.

It's no more racist than saying that person with ginger hair.

You don't get to decide what is or isn't racist, other wiser opinions are available.

@Sofiegiraffe

I’ve never heard someone being described as white in a day to day situation. Whiteness is something that’s never used as a descriptor

The police use "IC1 male / female" to refer to a white man or woman in their descriptions.

I meant day to day life, as in for those of us who don’t work with the police

@SrownBkinGirl

A black lady, a Chinese lady, a Spanish lady, an Indian lady.... Its a descriptor to easier identify/describe someone because of their own characteristics.

Except there's no nationality called Black. It's obvious where the Chinese, Indian and Spanish ladies are from. What about the Black lady?

This isn't a good argument for it but a lazy way to lump everyone with brown skin together.

Not at all, it's a characteristic! Or is that someone else's fault that there are so many different versions of skin colour? And how every predominant black country does not have their own "shade" How long has the argument of being black and proud being going on for within the mixed race communities.... As a white person, I literally cannot win here....

In the military we have lots of commonwealth soldiers (lumping all people of colour together) but if someone asked me to identify someone I. E. Oh Taluta.... Oh yeah he's the short skinny Fijian over there, Fijian Men in particular are generally characteristically different to their St Lucian, Gambian counterparts in my experience.

I have even had to describe a white Fijian.... (Genetic throwback) but the minute I say oh him the white Fijian, everyone knows who I'm on about because he has black features, a solid rugby stature with curly hair and a Fijian accent.

I think the OP raises an important question, about use of language and descriptive terminology which could be seen or felt by the recipient as ‘othering’.
Yes colour can be a harmless description, but we surely all have awareness that there is a difficult history behind categorising an individual by their skin colour.
I would avoid describing someone as the Jew, the fat woman, the man with the big nose, the child with the birthmark, the old lady with the humpback, rotten teeth, cross-eyes, the male wearing a dress - the list is actually endless. All excellent descriptions but surely we are sensitive enough to realise that saying out loud the first thing we notice about someone is not always appropriate, and actually tells everyone who hears something about our own attitudes and prejudices.

@SrownBkinGirl

A black lady, a Chinese lady, a Spanish lady, an Indian lady.... Its a descriptor to easier identify/describe someone because of their own characteristics.

Except there's no nationality called Black. It's obvious where the Chinese, Indian and Spanish ladies are from. What about the Black lady?

This isn't a good argument for it but a lazy way to lump everyone with brown skin together.

Eh, not it isn't obvious - how on Earth do you know that the "Chinese lady" isn't Hawaiian, Korean or Japanese? Or that the "Indian lady" isn't Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Uzbekistani? In trying to speak against racism you, yourself, are being racist, and therein lies part of the issue.

Race is incredibly complex, and isn't always aligned to how a person identifies. I don't mean chancers like Dolezal, but there are very many people who identify as Black British. Who is OP to tell them they may not do so in case it offends her?

Race is complex. The one thing we do know is that, as a group, people who are not white are discriminated against in white western society. We should all be working to combat that.

It was an assumption. If you don’t consider yourself a woman, then state what you feel that you are and I’ll call you that.

OP, you have just called us all women and said that, if any of us individually want to be referred to as something different, we should tell you (but presumably it wasn’t your fault for referring to us as women in the first place).

Surely the same applies to referring to you as black, considering that this is merely a descriptor which other black people are happy with and in no way whatsoever an insult (unless someone were to say “black” in a derogatory tone, then I would agree with you).

There is also no such race as “white” but I have absolutely no problem with being referred to as such, wherever in the world I may be at the time.

@MintyGreenDream

Mummy that man over there with brown skin looks friendly.

No love he has black skin not brown.

I'd correct my young son to say black as that's the right way to describe? Correct me if I'm wrong of course

Yea this is OP's problem. I assume the man has brown skin, not black skin? You could call him black though but he doesn't have black skin. So your son is right and also right to say the black man. But black man doesn't mean black skin.

Stop calling white people white then. I'm not white, I'm pale pink.

You are being rediculous. It is necessary to describe people by what you see.
Imagine you've been attacked and needed to describe the perpetrator but you couldn't say what colour skin they have....

You tell me because like I said previously, I’ve never heard someone being described as white in a day to day situation. Whiteness is something that’s never used as a descriptor

Where do you live that you've never heard this?

Certainly not the London borough I live and work in. If you're pointing out the woman at the bus stop, who's stood in amongst a crowd of black women, of course you're going to refer to her as the white woman if you need to describe her

My children (age 4&5) have started noticing people have different coloured skin. They say things like "I want the brown people to win' watching family fortunes, or in response to "which person do you mean?" in a mixed race group they might answer "the light coloured one" . If a person has particularly dark skin then yes they will describe them as black. If it's purely descriptive surely skin colour is one of the main visible differences between people along with gender and age?