Why I use the words ’Black’ and ‘White’ versus ‘brown’ and ‘peach’
by Sachi Feris
In Raising Race Conscious Children’s interactive workshops, participants practice explicitly naming race. I have gotten a lot of questions about the utility of using the words “Black” and “White” as part of the strategy to name race with young children:
“Isn’t it more appropriate to use words that more accurately describe our skin tones?”
“Since race is a social construct, aren’t we reinforcing the construct by using the words ‘Black’ and ‘White?’”
In one of my first blog posts for Raising Race Conscious Children, I shared how I name race when reading children’s books with my daughter. As I modeled in this post, I most definitely talk about skin tone. For example,
“This little girl has brown skin.”
“This boy has peachy colored skin.”
Or, in my daughter’s case when she challenged me to describe her skin color, “Your skin is like the color of a brown egg shell.”
But I usually continue these “skin tone” observations as follows:
“This little girl has brown skin…that people call ‘Black.’”
“This boy has peachy colored skin…that people call “White.’ We are White, too, but your skin is more like the color of a brown egg shell.”
People always want to know is if there is a right or wrong regarding the use of “Black” and “White” versus “brown” and “peach.” My answer is to start where it feels comfortable. If that means someone starts with skin tone, then that is where s/he starts. Transparently noticing skin tone and/or race is a step towards undoing color blindness.
But this is why I often use words that name both skin tone and race:
As a White person, I want my daughter to know that she is White. I don’t want Whiteness to be invisible for her. I don’t want to reinforce Whiteness as the norm. I don’t want her to have to get to college before she learns, as I did in college for the first time, that there is a thing called White privilege that is a daily reality. If my daughter doesn’t understand that she is White, I will not be able empower her to play a role in dismantling White privilege.
Join Raising Race Conscious Children for an interactive workshop to practice this proactive strategy of explicitly naming race.
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Sachi Feris is a blogger at Raising Race Conscious Children, an online a resource to support adults who are trying to talk about race with young children. Sachi also co-facilitates interactive workshops/webinars and small group workshop series on how to talk about race with young children. Sachi currently teaches Spanish to Kindergarten and 1st grade at an independent school in Brooklyn. Sachi identifies as White and is a mother to a three-year-old daughter and soon-to-be newborn son.
I’m glad you posted this, though it hasn’t changed my mind- I think I’m like one of your workshop participants: to use “white” is to reinforce the social construct of race. As a child of Chinese immigrants, it was never lost on me any of the racial designations- from my parents- my father, particularly, was aware of race, and in a sense drank the American Kool-aid of racial hierarchy despite his PhD in politics from a US university, and from my upbringing in the American south. And the idea of “white” is mutable the was skin color is not.
As I think of my own 4 yo child, who is South East Asian in descent (and thus looks… Nepali? Fillipino?) I’m thinking that I want him to learn that melanin content is a genetic lottery, but with awful, socially constructed implications. Too heady for children of course. But I don’t want to give weight or credence to the social construct. That’s why I love Baldwin and Coates’ notion of “people who think they’re white.”
It feels to me that when you say to a child (and I’m just thinking out loud on this), “Being White….” or “Since they’re Black…” you’re identifying them with that designation. And what I would think we want to do is to demystify that designation, to render it impotent. Thanks for reading.
Tse-Sung Wu, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and commentary. I wonder what Coates would think about this. My feeling is that to name it is to enable my children to acknowledge their privilege. If I do not name it, it remains neutral. I 100% agree that whiteness is a social construct, but the lived implications of whiteness=privilege are real hence my choice to use the word “white.”
Hi Sachi,
I stumbled upon this while looking for resources to provide the synagogue I am working with as we grapple with the ways we can be upstanders in the movement for black lives. I really appreciate your perspective. Everything I’ve read on this site has provided me with greater clarity and a deeper understanding of both the issues at hand and how to talk about them with children.
Keep it up!
– Jenny Levine-Smith (though, when you and I were in plays together in high school, I was just Jenny Levine). :):):)