Obama wins: How do you explain this day to your children?

[morningpaper]

How are you explaining the news to your children?

Do you mention race and if so, how?

Hoochie - last sentence - amen!

DD 10 yo has just been studying slavery at school. She made a poster at the weekend about Martin Luther King. She gets the struggles, the wrongs that had been perpetrated, why it is important. Why Americans had to get to this point before they could move on to a point where race truly doesn't matter.

There is a continuum and this is a point on that line to an end point where race is irrelevant - but an important and significant point was reached yesterday and I for one am celebrating that

in that voter turnout was the highest it's ever been and the people have spoken.

his race is irrelevant to me and i don't mention it. my children are bi-racial, too.

to me, it's about who you are, not what you are.

he is a man, a bright, clever human being with his own ideas about his country that i agree with in many ways.

i'm so proud of voter turnout. worked hard to get US citizens here to exercise their right to vote because people died for us to have that. it meant so much to them and should for us, too.

DD is 6. She just about grasped what an election meant, said Obama had big ears, and please can I watch cbbc? (which had a Newsround report about it too!)DS at 17 mths was more interested in having a clean nappy and some breastmilk!

I on the other hand think it is amazing. I am very hopeful for the future, despite the economic woes of the world.

we went to the newsagent this morning with dds and i pointed the wall of newspapers all with Barack Obama's face on the front page to dd1 and i said to her Look, this is Barack Obama, he is a great man. she's not yet 3 but i don't think it is too soon to start talking about this.

of course- i can hear what everyone says- he has yet to prove himself as president- and yet and yet, i still think he is a great man, even if he shouldn't turn out to be a great president. he has shattered a million barriers and thanks to him, and all of those who came before him and paved the way, hopefully when our dcs have children they will not have to explain to them why a black man as president is a momentous day. who knows, there may even be a woman next :-)

ginger, i feel hopeful too. he is clearly a great leader with a capacity to inspire and a clear vision. just what the world needs right now!!

There was an interesting experiment done on Radio 4 recently with children and the game 'Guess Who'. A group of white primary school aged children were given guess who to play, the characters are mixed, whites and blacks. At no point, even when it was really obvious to say so, did the children describe any of them as 'black' - so they'd ask if they had a beard, or curly hair etc but they wouldn't ask if the character was black, they avoided that description entirely. But when playing alongside a black child, once that black child mentioned the word 'black' this was their cue to use it too. They then had no problem in asking if the character was black.

Which just kinda goes to show that our children are unsure what is correct and what is not, even at that tender age they are afraid of being labelled as racist.

Aha OldestCat - I see we may be talking about the same programme here!

Linking in with Rhubarb's post, Gary Young who writes for the Guardian and is black of Caribbean descent, relates the story of someone looking for him and asking his colleagues to describe him so that they could find him. His colleagues mentioned his weight, his ear-ring, his hair length etc but no-one mentioned the most obvious feature in a predominantly white office - his skin colour. White people in the UK will generally do anything to avoid mentioning either colour or a disability when referring to other people for fear of being politically incorrect. In Barbados people are generally the opposite!

my dd was in disbelieve about how people could be racist.. you should have seen her!. how could they not like someone just because they have a different colour?
lovely innocence of youth

Dd (4) knows who Obama is. I told her he is the first black president of the USA. I have not explained to her why that is so important. She is mixed race and well aware of colour (as, ime, are most of her friends) but not yet, thank god, of racism.

I told my daughter that it was a great day because a good man had been elected to be president of the most powerful country in the World. It didn't occur to me to mention that he was the first black president. Just that he's clever & so much better than the incumbent or other option. We looked at pictures & she was most interested in his two little girls & which of the windows in the White House would be their bedrooms. It is a momentous event but for me as much to do with an intelligent, perceptive, decent individual doing the job.

dd2 (7)was very excited cos she didn't like bad John but why wasn't it on the news the day before when she was off sick.

I did not mention race as I do not want them to think it is extraordinary that he is a black president. Well, it is extraordinary for our generation but I sincely hope the day will soon come where colour is just so not going to be an issue at all.