Old commentary.

[conuly]

We've got this kid's book I adore, More More More Said the Baby.

I was really irritated a while back to read a comment about it on Amazon complaining about one of the kids being black, but having a white grandma - "It might confuse kids, they're not used to seeing this!!!"

I thought the point was absurd then, and I think it's more absurd now.

Little children I know routinely assume I'm Ana's mom. Our coloring certainly isn't similar, so they must just be figuring that if they see her with me, I'm probably her mother. But there's more to this story.

Today, Angelique and her friend Ana met up with another little girl we've met before, Sophia. Sophia is very pale, very blond, and she comes to the museum with her very dark, very Jamaican babysitter - who, quite aside from the obvious just looks nothing like the kid in build or facial features or whatever, probably because they're not related.

So, now, first Ana tells Sophia that she has to "ask her Mommy" before she can share everybody's strawberries - and then, after Sophia comes back, she tells us the following:

"She said I could have some. Oh, and she's not my mom, you know. She's my babysitter. See, my mom has black hair, and she has brown hair."

The almost certainly much more obvious difference in their skin color apparently never even occured to her. (Though, I don't know, I could be assuming things. I know. But the most likely answer is that her mom is just as liable to burn in the sun on a cloudy day as this kid is.)

Comments

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

I have that book! I love the diversity!

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

My family is multiracial hence my kids consider skin color like eye color or hair color.

[mayna.livejournal.com]

That's too cute. Well, pretty much every TV family doesn't look like one another (aside from usually being the same race) and somehow we believe it. So I guess kids don't realize that black people have black babies and white people have white babies, and a black + white couple have biracial babies. When I was a kid I used to think that horses and cows could procreate and make baby horses and baby cows (the horses were always boys and the cows were always girls), and that's even more extreme, those are different species! :-)

!!!!!!!

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

(the horses were always boys and the cows were always girls),

When I was little, all cats were girls, and all dogs were boys.

No, I have no clue how they procreated. Nor do I *want* to know. Its a happy memory of all same sex animals. :-p

[leora.livejournal.com]

Kids learn what is normal as they grow and get used to it. I didn't consider Asian to be a different ethnicity/race from Caucasian for a long time, and still tend to forget that it is classified differently. I heard a lot about white people and a lot about black people, so I figured there were two races. I knew Asian people, and they had fairly light skin, so obviously they were white and the same race as I was. Same with hispanic.

Then I got older and learned that the racial divisions are fairly arbitrary and stupid anyway.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Little children I know routinely assume I'm Ana's mom.

You gotta admit. Its better than when they assumed Ana and Seth to be twins!

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

I have that book! I love the diversity!

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

My family is multiracial hence my kids consider skin color like eye color or hair color.

[mayna.livejournal.com]

That's too cute. Well, pretty much every TV family doesn't look like one another (aside from usually being the same race) and somehow we believe it. So I guess kids don't realize that black people have black babies and white people have white babies, and a black + white couple have biracial babies. When I was a kid I used to think that horses and cows could procreate and make baby horses and baby cows (the horses were always boys and the cows were always girls), and that's even more extreme, those are different species! :-)

!!!!!!!

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

(the horses were always boys and the cows were always girls),

When I was little, all cats were girls, and all dogs were boys.

No, I have no clue how they procreated. Nor do I *want* to know. Its a happy memory of all same sex animals. :-p

[leora.livejournal.com]

Kids learn what is normal as they grow and get used to it. I didn't consider Asian to be a different ethnicity/race from Caucasian for a long time, and still tend to forget that it is classified differently. I heard a lot about white people and a lot about black people, so I figured there were two races. I knew Asian people, and they had fairly light skin, so obviously they were white and the same race as I was. Same with hispanic.

Then I got older and learned that the racial divisions are fairly arbitrary and stupid anyway.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Little children I know routinely assume I'm Ana's mom.

You gotta admit. Its better than when they assumed Ana and Seth to be twins!