Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Parenting

For free parenting resources please check out the Early Years Alliance's Family Corner.

How to start talking about racism?

1 reply

Thistledew · 26/09/2020 18:18

DS is just 4. We are white British. We used to live in a reasonably multi cultural area of London but now live in a very rural and homogeneously white area.

I want to bring DS up with an understanding of racism and how to be actively anti-racist rather than passively non-racist.

So far, it hasn't particularly come up organically as a topic of conversation other than at one point (I forget the exact context) when I said that some people treat other people differently because of the colour of their skin, which is a very silly thing to do because the colour of someone's skin is no more important than the colour of their eyes or hair.

Can anyone suggest any books or resources to start to address this in an age appropriate way?

The other reason I ask this question is that I need to head off a potentially awkward situation: DS is dinosaur obsessed, and his current favourite is the pachycephhlosaurus (pronounced pak-ee-sef-o-lo-saw-rus). Unfortunately, he tends to shorten this to the first two syllables. How do I persuade him not to go about talking about pakis? I need an age appropriate way of explaining that some people may be upset by this if they do not understand the context. He is a curious thing and will want to know why he shouldn't say it.

OP posts:
PersephonePromotesEquanimity · 27/09/2020 00:06

Why not just get into the habit of acknowledging/noticing/praising brilliant things done/said/imagined/created by people who don't look like you?

It would appear strange, to me, for you to introduce this subject by - and this would be the result - defining certain groups of people as being subject to hostility. Even if you wish to argue against such attitudes.

Wouldn't it be better for your son to begin his school career knowing that not-white people have climbed Everest, travelled to the North Pole, created great civilisations, carved statues, written plays, designed buildings, lead environmental campaigns, composed symphonies, etc, etc, etc, rather than being presented with a load of hand-wringing texts about why he must be kind to poor, put-upon, not-white underlings?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.