DS made racist comment at school

[ellie09]

I have a DS age 7 who has ASD and he struggles quite a bit socially.

I am utterly appalled and ashamed by what I have heard this morning. This wasn't any thing directly to me or by the teacher.

DS apparently made a comment to a girl in his class saying he "didn't want to play with her as she has brown skin". This apparently blown up in a private group chat on WhatsApp that I was not aware of. I hadn't had any communications from teachers or other parents, so I was confused.

His best friend at school is a Muslim boy and his granny is Brazilian. He has grown up around different skin colours from a baby. We have had a serious conversation today in which I have told him he must apologise to this girl tomorrow.

However, I am also angry that this has been put on a WhatsApp group before anybody has even spoken to me, I assume the teachers aren't even aware. Of course, this has caused outrage in the group chat (and rightly so!) but I can't help but feel this was wrongly handled by the other parent as this is a group of 7 year old children and issues like this can escalate very quickly.

How do I handle this moving forward? Do I request a meeting with the head teacher and make them aware of the incident etc?

I feel really sick at the thought of walking my child into school tomorrow, knowing that most will be judging based on what they have heard.

Btw, I'm not in the group chat - screenshots were sent to me by another parent.

Many years ago a child accused my ds of saying he was glad her grampa had died.
he was a sensitive wee soul and was put out of class and came home hyperventilating. Really upset, knowing him I knew he wouldn’t have said this.
on speaking to the depute head she twice said I think your only upset because you were found out. At that and stepped in and said you have not listened he has told you he didn’t say it. You have now accused him twice.
In the end it was another child who said it . We never got an apology, but I did raise awareness not to always listen to a child reporting something.
parent’s gossiping on WhatsApp is ridiculous and needs highlighted to school.
Hope it gets sorted ❤️

Hi op,

first gentle hugs 🌺 That was quite THE day of stress so please remember to be gentle with yourself.

You mention your son having special needs so you know that of course, through this lense, school would mediate any incidents as such in a different way and explain to others that as much as they do not tolerate this, your son certainly didn’t mean it.

To put it more explicitly, if your son was indeed racist, they would know by now. They don’t know, so they should defend him and quite fiercely if anyone doubt their own judgement. You explained him why it wasn’t ok. End of.

Also, I wouldn’t be happy about a whatsapp group where my child is put down like this. How on earth can they act like it is ok? Sounds like adults bullying and that is ugly. Noone need to share in a group that a child said something about brown skin if it is the first time. They should be ashamed, not you. So please, change your lenses. Defend him, defend him, defend him.

Good luck 🌺

Sorry, I haven't read to the end and I hope you have got this sorted for both your child and the little girl today.
I am a TA and have also had a child in the same school. Please do bring up any comments she has made, she should know better. She needs to keep her thoughts to herself, it's a student of the school and our contracts cover heavily what is and isn't appropriate behaviour for members of staff, regardless of them being a parent too.

If your child has a Muslim boy as his best friend and has no problems with other children of differing skin colour then you may find choosing to say that was probably the easiest route but, as you’ve found out many kids and parents can and will make things worse.
i was in a similar situation with my son with the parents at school, not race related but they all were happy to talking among them selves instead of coming direct to me.
go and see the teacher and let it be known how you feel let down and saddened by the fact that they felt they couldn’t speak to you.
also and formost have a chat with your son to see what’s really happened and what made him come out with this comment.

School should have mentioned this, I would book an appointment to speak to the teacher and head. I remember being targeted by a mum at afternoon pick up for something my youngest had done. I knew nothing about it till the mum had a go at me in front of everyone mums and dads. No one backed me up, I went to the teacher the next day. I fell out with the mums who didn't back me up. I had 1 friend out of 3 mums left.

Hi there. My nephew is of mixed perantage. He has ASD. His mother, is brown, dad white. A year or so ago he was fixated on colour, all of a sudden. (Things he was watching online), and he told one of his peers at school that he wouldn't sit next to him as he was a brown person. He thought it funny and couldn't understand the offence and hurt he'd caused. He got into trouble at school, understandably and rightly so because of it (secondary) and I had a long chat with him about how he had disrespected himself, his mother, extended family and all brown people, how it was not okay to say things like this under any circumstances, and how would he feel if the tables were turned. It got through to him. I have never heard him say anything like that again. Hope it goes OK with your son and he learns from the situation.

Please discuss this with the school , they can talk to both your son and the child involved , they can talk with that class and help young children to understand hurtful and racist language and help not escalate the situation . I would either personally write or talk to the author on WhatsApp and apologize and say you have talked about this with your son and he will apologize too to the child involved and you are also horrified and upset . He’s 7 and also need support not hatred from adults .

This is sensible!

Deeply unpleasant.

Fully grown adults gossiping and bad mouthing a 7yo in private is the worrying thing! Kids are forming and blurt out all kinds of nonsense. They need to grow up.

The other parents need to grow up I should add 🙄

To the original poster, you are doing your best and it’s absolutely clear from my reading of this thread. I wish you luck and I think you and your son will get through this. My appearance was heavily mocked when I was at school (weight and race), it was hard and I do remember some of the hurtful comments. Having said that if anyone were to reach out to me or if I’d known the matter was handled seriously with parents like yourself taking responsibility, it would have helped a lot. You’re doing the right thing.

p.s the matter should never have been discussed on WhatsApp.

Black and brown children have autism as well, why is it you never hear of any incidents with them making comments about race??

I wish people would stop blaming these remarks on autism, when it's clear he's just repeating what he's heard from someone else - and I'm not necessarily blaming the mum or anyone else in the family. It could be another child, or something he's seen on the telly etc. But he has heard it somewhere.

And I'm saying this as a mum of two brown skinned autistic children.

My son has autism and when he was about 7 or 8 he asked a girl if her brown skin could wash off and become white, I only found out about a week later because he asked me the same thing, I was mortified and didn't know what to do, ended up saying it to the teacher, she hadn't heard. We both had a conversation that day with him, I got him to say sorry even though he asked why he was saying sorry when he was just asking a question. It was tough going so I feel for you, maybe talk to the teacher and also get him to apologise to the girl in question x

The thing I don’t get though is that kids ask perfectly innocent questions and then we make them apologise for it?!
Surely you just explain it to them and leave it at that? Also making the point that it’s a sensitive topic and best not to bring up skin colour with other people?

It's called safeguarding this is why schools fail in Ofsted inspections they don't see the need to inform parents. It's too much hard work they have our children for near on 7 hours a day. They take on half the parenting responsibility it's important that there is a home school relationship. 168 parents complained when Ofsted turned up at my daughter's school and after that they received an inadequate. The academy trust brought in heads from other schools to sort it out all teachers had to reinterviewed. It was a mess and it was all because they couldn't be bothered to work with parents and record all incidents. The work also went downhill.

The parents are out of line putting it on WhatsApp but if there was no app they would be whispering and finger pointing in the playground. You can't stop people from talking about you. The school is at fault for not informing op in the first place.

I haven’t read the full thread but my DS (NT) did something similar at 5. We had a group of kids round to play and he and some of his boy mates closed his bedroom door and shouted “no girls allowed”. The girls were outside trying to get in. Then their black, male friend joined the girls so DS said “no girls and no one with brown skin allowed in”.

It was obviously very bad behaviour - I was absolutely mortified and you can bet I clamped down on it immediately but at 5 and growing up in a multicultural society DS actually had no idea of the racist context. He was absolutely making a cruel distinction but if it had been a white child he would have chosen something else to differentiate him - it wasn’t based on any preconceived ideas about race any more than excluding the girls showed he was sexist.

It was actually a really good opportunity to talk to him about race and racism. We bought lots of books and have had several discussions about it at length since. At 6.5 he would never make a comment like that now, but if the incident hadn’t happened perhaps I wouldn’t have realised I needed to be so proactive in having these discussions.

You mean black friend?

Wow, have you actually even bothered to read anything the OP has said??

Interesting - this raises the important point about sexism being ignored. My own little boy sometimes says he doesn't like girls or no girls allowed. Nobody starts a witch hunt for that. I'm not saying sexism is the same as racism but for thr posters who are out to crucify the little boy in question, I wonder if their little darling has ever made a sexist comment like that.

Once again, you cannot say it should have been reported to OP as you don't actually know what was even said. Teachers cannot report and record every minor disagreement everyday, it would take hours. The teacher clearly thought it was nothing as did the kids actually involved.

Your child's schools poor practice is completely irrelevant. Lots of schools build good parents school partnerships without reporting every minor thing, if your childs school is doing this they are still getting it wrong.

Young children may come out with racist sounding comments on their own and the comment may be innocent even though it doesn’t sound it.

My 5yo said he was doing to play ‘poo bandits’ on the bus (it’s his invention where bandits chase us and shoot us and turn us i to poo spaces).

This one time he said the people with brown skin can be the poo bandits (yes I am sure at least 2 of them heard). I was appalled then realised to him to was prob like boys one team, girls the other, sorting teams by hair colour or whatever.

I simply said to him we don’t choose who we play with based on appearance they can’t choose it’s not kind. I said how would he like all brown haired people to be bandits (he has brown hair) and he got the point. I didn’t even need to go
into the history of racism but would with an older child.

By age 7 maybe your child has come across racist comments (especially as you have no idea who says what at school) and is copying them. It shouldn’t be a big deal to explain that kind of comment (if he did make it) is rude and mean.

When I was at primary school I was often told I couldn’t play because I was a girl. Children are often becoming aware of differences and working out how to form social groups - it’s only later they realise friendship groups tend to be better based on interests, personality and shared experience rather than what colour their skin is or their favourite TV show.

The WhatsApp situation would stress me out too and I’d probably be avoiding the other parents too and they have no idea of what they have been told is correct because if it came from an adult at school you’d surely have been I formed….

I don’t know what to do about them but a discussion with your child about why that is such an inappropriate comment (even if they didn’t make it) is definitely due, along with an apology to the brown skinned child by whoever made the comment. And to be hi eat ideally an apology by the gossiping parents. They have behaved appallingly.

@ellie09 I would not start by scolding him. As you noticed he's just crying and not answering. Firstly to get all the facts straight I would ask him if he said that and ask why and how he feels about people with different skin colours. When my son started secondary he was excluded one day from school for having said "dirty black" at a girl. He wasn't able to talk to me about it, just cried and I was horrified. Finally he told me it was his a girl he used to play with all the time who had teased him (discreetly) for having a handicap (Asd) and an assistant during class. He had yelled "dirty black" because he wanted to hurt her back. Not an excuse, but I was really worried about him being labeled a racist especially since 80% of his friends are muslim and he's absolutely not racist. He used to play a lot with this girl and they had a fallout. She was teasing him out of earsight while he just screamed out loudly in front of everyone so ofcourse he got punished while she got the victim status. My son was told off by me for having said something racist instead of telling his assistant so the girl could be punished instead of him.
Having had this experience I would like to know what prompted your son to say something like that to her...

Yet the school has admitted to the op that there is a problem with other kids talking about skin colour. They should have brought it up so op had the chance to talk to her son and guide him. They are 7 now and then 8,9, 10 and so on. The hard work starts now on making sure our little people grow up to be civilised individuals.

@ellie09 i understand the upset you must feel. And the girl in question. But your son will be upset too. I have a son with ASD and they really can come out with some inappropriate things that they don’t mean, they just don’t know what to say and the wrong thing comes out. Please support him. I really don’t think he meant this as a racist comment.