a pretend birthday party

Melissa here.

Tonight, as Tani was eating his dinner, he started talking about how he was going to pretend that it's his birthday tomorrow and that he's having a party. He said that only light-skinned people would be coming. I don't recall having spoken with him about light-skinned and dark-skinned people--perhaps he recently learned that terminology from someone. He said that dark-skinned people weren't allowed to come. Having given a talk on the topic of young children and race at High Holidays and having read about the studies of young children's perception of race in the book NurtureShock, I knew that young children do naturally discriminate and that it's our job as parents to teach kids that we don't need to discriminate based on this category. Although the reality is that except for his good friend next door who is black, the kids with whom he socializes are mostly white. We are friendly with black people in the building here and in the neighborhood, but our social life and the parties we attend are generally among the light-skinned. I asked Tani whether he thought that light-skinned people are better than dark-skinned people and he said yes, and I asked why and he said because they're different, but didn't say anymore. He then said that the dark-skinned humans will have a party in the room across the hall at the same time. He also then named a few dark-skinned people who could come to his party. I suggested that perhaps we could have one party for everyone-- he's wasn't sure and we agreed to discuss it again tomorrow. More to unfold here as I am challenged by how to teach my child about race and challenged to examine the ways in which our worlds are indeed separate.