Telling DD the darker your skin the more beautiful you are but she won't accept it

[PatricksRum]

DD7 is slightly darker than me and consistently tells how she hates her skin because "it's too dark."
She says she wants skin like mine as then she could be beautiful.
The difference between us is negligible and barely noticeable.

She has lots of darker-skinned dolls, toys and books containing them but is there anything else I can do to reinforce that black is beautiful?

I never specified that I was referring to aesthetics. Beauty incorporates many different aspects.
I didn't mention a race, I said said darker skin. Black isn't one tone.

You see as a Black person, I think I am seeing this conversation through that lens so the OP doesnt need to explain this to me.

With the message she is sending her daughter, her daughter would be inspired by say a South Sudanese very dark skinned Black model like Alek Wek (showing my age) even if the model is much darker than her because they are both dark skinned in terms of how Black people have always been classified and in turn, how we classify ourselves.

Exactly this.

I teach her similar about her feeding tube.

She already views lighter as beautiful so teaching her the same about black people is not going to cause her to mistreat lighter-skinned people.

Black is a spectrum.
We have an Indian family friend who is darker than her.

I dont believe youre genuine about this at all, but for arguments sake youd be happy for her to say to a lighter skinned Asian child at school that shes not as beautiful as her because her skin is paler? You want that for your child?

Im going to ask directly now. Are you Black?

There appears to be an undertone developing that I strongly object to, that if we disagree with the OP we mustn’t be black. I disagree with the OP completely and I am black with very dark skin. I disagree with the OP because I think her attitude is divisive and I’m not convinced she is posting in good faith.

The reason why I asked that poster if she is Black is because she brought up Asian people when in my experience, anyone who is Black and has been raised in a Black family would understand the irrelevance of Asian people in this conversation about Black people. The only relevance is the fact that the reason many Black people have lighter skin and looser hair is because they have mixed Asian ethnicity.

Asian people may have very similar conversations. In fact I know they do. However, there are reasons why they are separate and internal conversations. The differences in historical context being one of them.

How is it irrelevant if a child tells any other child they are less beautiful because of the color of their skin?

The message a child needs is that any skin can be beautiful and that what is inside is more important than the color of your skin. Ie- being beautiful on the surface isnt the most important thing.

I don't see the difference to this opinion if I am Black, white, or mixed.

And this is what I tell my kids.

Because the OP is talking to her Black daughter about Blackness. The artifical rules around colour/race that were imposed on everyone from the colonies placed Asian people above Black people as they typically have lighter skin and/or looser hair. That is why being mixed with Asian has been historically seen as something of high (particularly aesthetic) value through a colourist lens. It meant that Black people with mixed Asian heritage essentially looked more white and were given privileged positions as a result. Even in Black countries. This is changing.

The OP's Black daughter would not listen to her mother and then apply this to non-Black people.

I do not understand or accept why any of this means that its acceptable to tell a child one type of skin is more beautiful than another.

The OP can tell her daughter as I do that Black skin is beautiful. So is white skin. So is brown skin. Afro hair is beautiful, red hair is beautiful, etc etc. Now go play.

A 7 year old doesn't need to consider historical hierarchies of black/brown/cream/white when discussing beauty. They don't need to know where they would have fallen in this hierarchy a few years ago, and at 7 they don't need to know what a colorist lens is. I dont expect my 7 year old to right historical wrongs with attitudes she's too young to understand. She can do that when shes older if she wants.

For now all she needs to know is that shes beautiful inside and out, and to go and play.

Unfortunately as a 7 year old Black girl, she would have already noticed it. Things are changing as I said, but only because we are having these conversations.

If you notice, my initial post on this explained why I personally take a different approach with my Black children. I send a different message. But that might be due to who I am, who my kids are, where we are and what they look like.

This will be very hard for you to understand if you are not Black or have not been raised in a Black family/community. That isnt to say you would agree with any particular viewpoint, but you would understand the context of this conversation.

So you would tell your child that her skin is more beautiful than another child's?

Society has already fed my daughter the message that her skin colour is superior to her darker skinned relatives and actually aspired to by her white peers. The things that I need to emphasise are more about how that validation is fake and racist.

I have never experienced society treating me differently, or as lesser, because of my dark skin. Ironically, the only people who have repeatedly suggested that I am viewed less favourably because of my skin colour are members of my own family/community. They have projected a narrative of disadvantage onto me that I have not encountered in real life.

Do you have other children @PatricksRum ? How would you handle this if one was lighter than the other?

If your message is that the darker the skin = the more beautiful you are, you are absolutely part of the problem. A healthy attitude to skin colour does not start with a hierarchy of shade. You are failing as a parent.

Again. If you find Channing Tatum more attractive than David Beckham does that mean you find David Beckham ugly? Would you go up to David Beckham and say so? Is that the first thing that comes to mind when you see someone? Why are you using beauty as a reference to aesthetics only? She also prefers longer hair but has yet to go up to someone with shorter hair and say they aren't as beautiful.

No no. I'm asking if you're black because if you aren't then I'm not interested in your opinion on this matter.

Are you black?

I don't need to tell her that white skin is beautiful as society already does this for her.

The same way I express that black lives matter but I don't repeat the rhetoric for white people as white people already instil into us that their lives matter, and matter more than black people's lives at that.

What a privileged life you've lived.
Unfortunately, that's an outlier and isn't the case for the rest of the black people in society.

Part of which problem?

I would repeat it to any of my children who expressed that view.

So you would say one of your children was more beautiful than the other because their skin was darker?

And I have clearly stated a number of times that I am black. Questioning my ethnicity purely because I don’t agree with you is borderline racist, and you don’t get to be the spokesperson for all black people.