Being politically correct in raising your children
February 22nd, 2010 | 
Author: Strange topic for a ‘baby blog’ I suppose BUT babies, become children, become adults. What we teach them now is the basis for how they approach people in the future.
This contains lots of questions and I hope I get replies as I dont intend them as purely hypothetical. I am really curious how others see it – beyond the group I have discussed similar things with in the past (I tend to disagree with the approach of the majority).
What is your take on children being aware of colour? How do you approach it with your own children? Is recognising someone’s colour discrimination?
I think we are taking being Politically correct about colour way too far – I cannot tell you how many times people try claim that children “dont see colour” – Of course they see colour, they just dont care! But as adults trying to navigate the maze of rules as to what is ‘allowed and not’ we try to tell ourselves that they don’t see colour. Now if they can see that a boy has a blue shirt, or a girl has blonde hair – why would they not see that that skin colours differ?
What are we actually teaching our children by trying to make them stick everyone in one colourless box? Do YOU want to be colourless?
The whole colour PC issue is going the same way as the feminism movement, where in my opinion they lose focus of what is important. If we ignore colour we lose sight of all the wonderful unique attributes of people and actually I feel create a nation less tolerant of differences in culture ‘as we are all meant to be the same’. I WANT my children to recognize racial differences and learn to accept them. How do we expect children to learn about different cultures and respect them if we are teaching them in the first place not to recognise or acknowledge those differences?
For me respect is based in acceptance, and tolerance and not in being the same. Equality is based on respect and acceptance of others and not on overlooking differences.
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My 4 year old has just started drawing brown-skinned “Sotho people” and blond and blue-eyed “yellow curly-haired people”. But it was interesting that she had to ask what colour my husband’s cousin was, before drawing a picture of her on a card. She also knows that most poor people are “brown” but recently observed that “not all brown people are poor”.
My 4 yo son pointed out the colour differences to me the other day and I was shocked as we never refer to people by colour. I guess it was something he picked up at his new pre-school. I knew it was coming. I simply told him that while people looked different on the outside, we were all the same on the inside. As time goes on I do plan to teach him the cultural differences between the various races but I want him to retain his childhood view that it makes no difference.
You’re right – kids see colour ( how can they not), it just doesn’t make a difference, unless they learn from us that it should. I also think that it’s very important that we as parents communicate our position regarding colour to our kids, because the other kids at school pick up very strong views from their parents. And in the absence of parental guidance, you child may be confused about race relations because they’re getting some negative feedback from friends at school.
I don’t know if you remember that girl who was abducted, raped and killed in Pretoria ( name escapes me right now), and there was a very visible anti- violence campaign where people wore pink T-shirts and jeans? Anyway, Baby, who was around 9 or 10 at the time, came home one day and complained that South Africans were making a big hoohaa about a White child being killed, but they say nothing when a Black child is being killed. You can imagine how shocked I was, because that kind of talk is way out of line in our home. And, a big branch of our family is actually White, so in general she’s very well adjusted about race and us being multi-cultural. So I probed and found out that there were a couple of bigger kids who were spouting the “woe is Black people” crap and she was just repeating what she heard. Anyhoo, that issue was dealt with speedily, but it did emphasise how important it is for me for me to talk to Baby about race relations in South Africa.