Ok, I'm a caucasion (sp) female. Ds, 5, is beginning to notice people are different. I am trying to be politically correct with him. I try to not use 'labels' but sometimes it helps to be able to describe someone you are talking about, especially with kids.

For example, I was trying to describe someone to an old friend of mine (he was a repairman that was there for the afternoon). Me being white, didn't want to describe him to my friend as 'african american, black, etc.' because my friend was African american. I just didn't want to offend. I was like, "he's pretty tall, not thin, not a big guy, doesn't wear glasses", etc. and she just said, "was he a black guy?" and I said "Yeah". So sometimes you Do need to describe someone to other people!

I am caucasion and my ancestors from Europe, but I do not call myself, "European American", to me that sounds kinda crazy. So why would I describe someone as "African American"? But to call someone, "white", "black", I don't know I don't like that really either. I don't know if there is really a good answer to this question. I'm just looking for respectful ways to describe people to my ds!!

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I also avoid describing other people as "black", "hispanic", "oriental", etc. After all, when people describe me the first thing to come out of their mouths isn't, "She's white ..."

To make matters worse, I'm horrible at figuring out people's ethnicity. I worked closely with a woman for over 5 yrs before she told me she was Mexican. Really? I had no idea. I thought her annual tradition of making tamalas on Christmas day was just a really neat idea. Duh!

Additionally, even though I'm clearly white, my ethnicity does have a racial mix. I have stick-straight hair which is best described as 'oriental'. Several of my ancient ancestors were Mongolian - a mixture of negroid and oriental - and I can definately see traces of those genes in my family line. My husband is part American Indian, too. While he looks white, he also has subtle signs of that genetic material in him.

So, I've come to the conclusion that differences like 'white', 'black', oriental, hispanic, etc are not all that important. We're so genetically intermixed, nobody is exactly one description over another. I know I'm not.

How do I describe all this to my 5-yr old? She doesn't call herself 'white'. She says she has 'pink skin'. She knows my skin is slightly darker than hers (I have a pale olive complexion). She knows others have darker skin than hers and darker hair coloring. For instance, she says my hair is 'black' even though it is dark brown but she's always had trouble telling the difference between those two colors. I have told her how some people were treated very mean just because they had darker skin and dark curly hair and how that wasn't very nice. Other than that we don't make a big deal about the issue.

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"Poor people work for their money. Rich people make their money work for them."

JMO - but, if you MUST say a color when giving a description - just do it. White people know they are white, black people know they are black, hispanics know they are tan.....it's hard because there are so many "shades" of each color...but - like I said - JMO - I dont think anyone should be offended just because you trying to describe the person...

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Me, Mom and Caden

I agree, when description are posted for police stuff (missing kids, etc) they are described as caucasion or whatever.

We just say light skin, or darker skin, or very dark skin (just like light hair, or red hair, or dark hair, etc.).

Cheers, from
SwampWitch