I have a racist 3 year old

[magnumpi]

What do I do? In the last week (out of nowhere) he's pointed to a middle-eastern child in the playground and said " there's one of them in my nursery" and this was followed yesterday with " I don't like brown mans" as we walked to nursery past said man. He doesn't get it from home(we are all white). I can't think where he does get it from, but should I address it? Or ignore it in the hope it was a momentary blip? I have two older kids who never said anything horrible like that.

ask him why.

He's at an age where he will start to notice differences in people, (there are plenty of posts on mn from posters whose three yo's have come out with such gems as "look at that fat person," for instance, so being "brown" is not dissimilar. But at three he doesn't have the capability to verbalise it in a way that doesn't come across as offensive.

So - I would just ask him outright "why do you say that you don't like brown people?" and then perhaps follow with an explanation of "we all look different, some people are black, and some are white, and others might have no hair, and some might have no arms, but we're all people, and what we look like doesn't change that."

It's not racist, and he probably hasn't 'got it' from anyone. He just doesn't yet have the social skills to stop the 'say what you see'.

My dd1 started saying she didn't like black people - and we were about to move to the Caribbean . I think she was about 4 at the time. I just asked her why she didn't like them, speaking about how everyone is the same under their skin etc. Strangely enough, she kept saying it when she had started school in St Lucia - I pointed out that most of her best friends were black, to which she firmly told me they were brown! I think she had seen a very dark-skinned woman being very aggressive on the TV, which is where she decided she didn't like "black" people.
Anyway she is fine now (two years on).
They aren't racist, they don't know the meaning of the word - but it is definitely worth talking to him about it.

Thank you, you are both right. I think I was a bit thrown that he said it as a negative thing instead of just being observational. I'll ask why if he says it again.

There is an interesting chapter in Nurtureshock about race. It basically says that 75% of white parents never talk about race because they think that a discussion will highlight devisions but that children are 'developmentally prone to in group favouritism'. When they are young they categorise people but only have the ability to use the most obvious visual attributes eg gender and race.
A child will strongly identify with people in the group who most most closely resemble themselves and project his/her likes onto those people. The things the child doesn't like he will think belongs to the people least like himself and he will assume the groups share characteristics ie all my group are clever, all those other people are mean.

My dd is in YR with 30 dcs. 27 are white, 3 are mixed race. DD is mixed and her 2 best friends are the other mixed race dcs. It could be a co-incidence, they are all girls and all started in Sept (we have a jan intake) and they are all about the same level so are grouped together, but I think there is an element of wanting to be with people who look the same.

When my stepdaughter was a little older than your LO we were shopping for Bratz dolls (i hated them but she loved them). She pointed to the brown doll and said "I don't want that one, i don't like the brown ones". We were both a little shocked, but just said there was nothing wrong with the brown one, she was as good as the white ones and the same on the inside but just a different colour on the outside. To this day i have no idea whether it had any impact on her - she lives in a village outside our city where eastern europeans and black people don't exist so she doesn't tend to come into contact with people of other colours and faiths very often. But i tend to agree it is just that children a certain age start to recognise differences. Don't get hung up on it, just try to explain the best you can for someone his age and try to teach him that he can hurt people's feelings by saying some things. He'll grow up fine welcoming all kinds of people - fat, thin, black, pink with yellow spots - i'm sure!

what shatners said, kids this age say as they see and they dont mean anything by it.

my ds4 is just three and we were in matalan the other day and he was scared of all the manacin (sp) dummy figurines, but the one he was most scared of was the black one and he declared very loudly that 'i dont like that black man, he is scary' i was mortified as people did turn to look but he was also scared of the silver and white ones, and then declared 'the red one is my faveourite tho!' so what does that mean?!!

i think they all say these things without any malice and in my case he wasnt even talking about real people but shop dummies, it was still embarrasing tho!

My dd1 is 6 and she is mate with lots of black and mixed race boys in fact she seems quite obsessed with them! However the other day she walked past one of said friends an said "bye brownie"! I was horrified and shot my hand and slapped her bum, then I realised he was laughing and that she hadn't realised what she said was wrong as that's his nickname between mates at school . so I had a lot of explaining to do to dd that night to try and get across about race an why we don't call names such as brownie even in a friendly wAy. I think it's quite a difficult thing for kids to grasp really

I don't know - my dd was called golden girl, whitey etc at her school, no-one batted an eyelid including her teachers. Should I have pulled them up on this? It was just descriptive.