Let’s Talk About Skin

Raising issues of race with young children

by Rita Tenorio

Early one fall, I sat down with seven children in my first-grade class. We talked about how we were alike and how we were different. “Our skin is different,” one child said. I asked them to put their hands on the table, so we could see all the colors.

But LaRhonda, who is African American, scowled and slid her hands under the table.

It was a reaction I had seen before. I teach at La Escuela Fratney in a racially mixed, working-class Milwaukee neighborhood. My students include Black kids, Whites, and Latinos. And, unfortunately, many of these six- and seven-year-olds believe it is better to be light-skinned than dark. Already, the legacy of racism in our country has made an impact.

I have seen fair-skinned children move if Black children sit down next to them. English speakers won’t play with Latino children. On the playground, a group of White girls won’t let their darker-skinned peers join in their games, explaining: “Brown kids can’t be in our club.”

Some people would say my students can’t deal with issues of race because they are too young. But my experience says they can. During the past several years, those of us teaching first grade at Fratney have developed activities to help us discuss race and social justice in an age-appropriate way.

We ask our students to collect and share information about their families and ancestry: How they got their names, how their families came to Milwaukee, which holidays they celebrate and how. At every step, we help them explore the nature of racial and cultural differences, and to overcome simplistic notions of who’s “better” or who is “like us” and who isn’t. 

We discuss our skin colors. Usually at first, some children—especially those with very dark skin like LaRhonda—are reluctant to describe their color.

We ask students if they have ever heard anyone say something bad or mean about another person’s color. Hands shoot up.

“My mom says you can’t trust Black people.”

“My sister won’t talk to the Puerto Rican kids on the bus.”

“Mara said I couldn’t play, that I was too Black to be her friend.”

We talk about ways we’ve heard others use people’s skin color to make fun of them and what to do in those situations. And we ask: Do people choose their color? Where do you get your skin color? Is it better to be one color than another?

In the story The Colors of Us by Karen Katz, Lena learns that “brown” is a whole range of colors. Like the characters in the story, we take red, yellow, black, and white paint and mix them until we’ve each found the color of our own skin.

In another exercise inspired by Sheila Hamanaka’s All the Colors of the Earth, students look for something at home that matches their skin color. We display the pieces of wood and fabric, the cinnamon and coffee, the dolls and ceramic pieces that match us.

Gradually, students begin to see past society’s labels. It is always amazing to children that friends who call themselves “black,” for example, can actually have very light skin. Or that Puerto Rican children can be darker than some African Americans.

The children learn to challenge stereotypes and speak back to unfair comments. Annie wrote, “I like my skin color. It is like peachy cream.” James wrote, “My color is the same as my dad’s. I think the new baby will have this color too.” And Keila wrote, “When I was born, my color was brown skin and white skin mixed together.”

When LaRhonda wrote about mixing the colors to match her skin, she said: “We put black, white, red, and yellow [together]. I like the color of my skin.”

How far she had come since the day she would not show us her hands.

Students’ names have been changed. Rita Tenorio (rmmt@aol.com) is an editor of Rethinking Schools. A longer version of this article is at  Rethinking Schools Online.

PHOTO: STANLEY LEARY