Can someone help with explaining this to ds (skin colour etc)

[Nerf]

Ds was talking to dd about Punjab from Annie and was confusing us all by describing him as black. How best to explain black, white and then Asian, Eastern European etc (rather than a colour) . Ds has asd and I am just confusing him by saying that so and so is Indian, not 'brown' but it's okay to describe his cousin as black. (Jamaican).
I am now confusing myself

I think plenty of adults are confused.

Would these kinds of words help...

The only truly right thing to say is what the person themselves likes to use, the rest of the time we're just guessing.
Probably most Punjabi people would describe selves as Indian or Punjabi rather than other words.

The word black is usually reserved for people with very dark skin and African origins.

The best rule is don't talk about skin tone or race unless you know for sure what the person themselves likes to call themselves. Because the words are just approximate descriptions, they aren't absolutely true and the same forever.

Thank you! It's really hard to explain the sort of obvious things we all pick up (black is okay, brown isn't, yes, pink is accurate but not really used) to him.

Funny isn't it. in fact brown is factually accurate whereas black isn't and white isn't and yet those are the accepted terms no wonder your DS is confused!

Can you tell him that it's a topic that lots of people are sensitive about and it's probably best to avoid describing someone by their colour altogether?

Can you explain that 'black' and 'white' are words with another meaning besides being a color, just like other words have more than one meaning? Therefore "black" is a way of saying someone has ancestors from certain countries and often darker skin, and isn't the same as the meaning for a color.

Thinking of other non-race examples: navy beans aren't blue!

I call myself brown and I am. DS is 2.5 and just noticing that he is different. I would say some people from Asia look different from those in the UKor from those in Africa and people from those parts of the world live here today. I prefer South Asian to Indian (because many Punjabis are from Pakistan too). I think the geographical rather than the racial terms might be better although hand on heart, if someone described me as a short brown woman I would take zero offence, but that's just me.

Thanks kewrious, I do worry because he wants to get things right and would be devasted to upset someone, but his asd makes it hard for him to just accept this!
Minipie, definitely I am going to talk to him about avoiding commenting on appearances, and maybe we will start referring to his cousins as Jamaican (as opposed to black).

Sorry, herms, wasn't ignoring you! Yes, it's a hard one to get your head round - I have never thought about this until he raised it today.
I wonder how it became okay to use black and white but nothing in between! Good idea about words having two meanings.

I'm very bad I'd say that we have to call brown people black, even though it makes no sense what so ever, but neither does calling beigy pink people white.

I know! I'm really really pale, but still more pinky yellow than paper white.
Poor ds, it's quite hard.
He was just so confused, I wish they'd watched Oliver! Instead.

Just to chuck my experience into the mix...years ago I read that the best way to deal with and potentially eliminate racism (and other physical differences for that matter) was with children to let them notice and comment on differences of appearance, acknowledge their observations, perhaps explain the history/geography if you know, and then enforce the message that under the skin we are all the same.

I've asked a few friends from different countries and with different skin colours and physical differences what they think about this idea and all have said that honesty is the best policy. Yes, there is a difference, isn't that interesting? Here's why. But it doesn't mean anything beyond that.

I've applied this to various scenarios with my own DCs, including for example watching Paralympic athletes, and so far it seems to be working.

Of course the best thing to do is be friendly and learn peoples names, then you won't have to discibe them at all.

I guess you could explain people don't like being described by their skin colour, any more than my DDs like to be her with the red hair or her wearing glasses.

We are whole people not just one charecteristic.

It's best not to describe people by their physical characteristics if at all possible, whatever colour they are.

Interesting last two posts - it's quite a leap to let children do that isn't it? All our instincts are to avoid comments on skin colour and appearance.
Absolutely I try to teach all of them not to comment on appearance (particularly ds who is very honest in his descriptions...)
But I think he is now trying to understand (but why mum?) how we could say uncle x is black but not that my friend is brown.
Argh! I shall just reinforce what's been said on this thread and try to distract him with some interesting maths.

"All our instincts are to avoid comments on skin colour and appearance."

I disagree, we're quite tribal instinctively & want to figure out from young age who is safe (i.e., part of our family/locality/ethnic group/language group/religion/nationality), etc. It's very naive to pretend that human instinct isn't powerful. We have to teach a lot to over-ride it.

I would say "Of Asian appearance" - the reason we don't say that black people are "African" (for example) is that darker skin tones can be native to other places too, e.g. South America.

Maybe you could explain that in the past a lot of people and even today a few people aren't very nice to people who have a different skin colour and think that people with white skin are better than them. That's why we need to be careful about what we say because we don't know if somebody might have had an upsetting experience, and also because the not very nice people use certain words and therefore those words aren't okay to use.

Its a really difficult one, isn't it.

I agree that obviously hopefully you know people's names and use them, but sometimes you're trying to describe someone for a good reason, and normally you'd use appearance. So for example, if someone was coming to a stall & looking out for me to ask me about my business (quite likely scenario), I'd expect someone would say 'she's very short with brown hair & glasses, quite likely to have a large dog with her'.

I remember reading a very interesting article by the Guardian journalist Gary Younge, saying how daft it was that people would go to enormous lengths to avoid mentioning his skin colour when he was middle age, average height, etc etc but the only black journalist in the Guardian newsroom at the time.

And sometimes it is the only thing that helps. My black (well light brown and freckly, but of African desent) flat mate had two make DFs.

They were stupidly shy, if she was out they would flee without speaking.

Her first question was always "was it the it the dark one or the very dark one?"

She never did convince them to simply leave a name, but they were psychologists.

Holiday, wrong wording, meant all out instincts as parents is to stop them commenting on appearance - poor choice of words.
Comet - how does being a psychologist stop someone leaving a name
Thanks all for helpful suggestions - it is weird that saying Asian sounds fine (To me) but saying African sounds wrong.
Luckily he hasn't mentioned it today although I am dreading his next encounter with his uncle when he is bound to helpfully try to clarify things...

Reading with interest as my kids are mixed race and when the eldest came home from preschool aged 2 1/2 and announced 'I'm black, Mummy', I was a bit flummoxed. Luckily, DH was there at the time and said 'yes, you are' so no further head scratching required on my part.

I would have said the same given a few more seconds to process the fact that this must have been discussed at preschool and wondering what on earth the context was!

Y'know, your kid's uncle may have an interesting point of view, so don't worry about your son asking questions.

Weird thing to suddenly come out with nails
Yes true, uncle might be okay with it, not sure he will be up to the close scrutiny that will be needed to satisy ds!

Are you talking about the classic Annie movie? If you are then it's even more confusing because Punjab is black.

OMG you're right Cinnamon! Punjab, weirdly, IS black. Just googled to check.

Your DS is right OP!

In the US they tend to use African-American.

I think that you can say someone is Jamaican, for example. Sometimes it's obvious through a combination of skin colour and accent, for example. Or an older term which still seems acceptable (please correct me if I'm wrong) is West Indian.

The thing is, Asian seems a bit odd to me as a way to describe a British person who happens to have ancestors from that part of the world.

Thinking of girls I knew at school, for example, they were Asian the way that I am Irish/Italian - their grandparents may have been south Asian, but they most undoubtedly are 100% midlands .

Is he? Oh bloody hell poor ds, I just glanced over and assumed he was Sikh

Well, thanks everyone and all that...