My son came to me one day last year and said he didn’t like the way his eyes looked. I think he called them “Chinese eyes”. He didn’t like that he looked different than his friends. He called himself a few names that I don’t want to repeat. My heart broke for him that day, and so we began our family talk on race, acceptance and being different.Â
While I will never know what it feels like to be Black. My family and I face issues with discrimination and being different.Â
In these heartbreaking volatile times, I hope this post will be of help in having a conversation with your children. May they grow to be inclusive and compassionate. May they imbibe the truth that human beings belong to one family.Â
I had bookmarked a few years ago a blog post on 37 Children’s Books to help talk about Racism & Discrimination published by coloursofus . I tried to access that this morning to share the link but their site was down. Probably slammed from a lot of traffic of people sharing that list of resources. I found a cached copy of the web page before their site went offline and decided to repost it below in case it’ll be helpful for you.Â
You can also checkout a great list of best selling Children’s Books on Prejudice and Racism here on amazon. Lots of great resources there.Â
If you have other helpful resources to educate us and our children on these issues, please let me know in the comments below.Â
(Repost)
“I have a dream
that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King
Sadly, the above part of Martin Luther King’s famous dream still hasn’t come true and racism is very much alive and well in America (as well as in many other parts of the world).
Talking to our children about racism and discrimination is as necessary as it is uncomfortable for most parents (especially white parents). Necessary because racial bias in children starts as early as from the age of 3; uncomfortable because it means we have to address our own racial biases, too.
These multicultural children’s books are a selection of picture books and novels about the past and the present. They can be helpful for talking to your children (Elementary to High School) about racism and its devastating consequences.
