As a non-parent, I am just curious.
How old are your kids?
Do your kids have interracial friends and what percentage?
Has race ever been an issue? (With the kids, or you.)
Is/will interracial dating be an issue?
Just curious, and hoping things are getting better than when I was growing up.
My daughter is 18. Over the years, she’s had friends of all kinds. I truly believe she accepts individuals on their own merits and forms friendships based on common interests and activities. She avoids people who she considers to be mean and hateful, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or anything else, for that matter. I have no idea what the percentages would be.
When she was in kindergarten, she came home and told me “I don’t like M” - I knew that M was a black boy in her class. Dreading the thought of having birthed a little bigot, I asked her why.
She explained “Because he’s a kissy-boy.” Apparently, he liked to run around the playground and kiss the girls. I have to admit I was relieved that she disliked him because of what he did and not for who he was. As I think back now on the different girls she befriended and brought home for sleepovers, I’d say she dealt with everyone on an individual level.
As for interracial dating - her choice. If it was good enough for me…
My daughter is almost 14. We live in a suburb that is roughly 50% white, 25% Hispanic and 25% (combined) black and Asian.
When she was in kindergarten, she once related a story about a little girl named Vanessa. I was unsure which child Vanessa was, so I questioned her. She told me Vanessa was the one who always wore a pink sweater. No help. Further questioning revealed that Vanessa was the one who had a deaf cat, who went to Florida over Christmas break, who had a fuzzy blue ponytail holder. Finally, I had occasion to be on the playground one day and she pointed to Vanessa - at that time, the only black girl in her class. I was very proud of myself for having a kid for whom race was such a non-issue.
Things have changed a little. As she and her friends have grown up, I’ve noticed that they have more of a tendency to group along racial lines. Her “best buds” are mostly white, with one Laotian girl and one Hispanic boy in the “core” group, but none of them seem to harbor the racial attitudes we had growing up. One white girl in the core group was “going out with” a black boy, and there’s a small group of three black girls whose own core group sort of rotates in and out of my daughter’s core.
Right now, they all seem to be more aware of their religious differences than their racial differences. The kids in the “core” consist of a couple Catholics, a Jewish girl, two Jehovah’s witnesses, a Baptist, two Lutherans, a Muslim and a Pagan, and they have more conversations about religion than race. What I think is neat is that these kids spend a lot of time LEARNING about one another’s religion, and when they talk about it, they’re amazingly respectful of one another’s beliefs.
Well, I’m white. The Wifestrocity is white. The Man-Cub and Fem-Bot are both South Korean-born, so if they have any racial issues, it’d be pretty shocking. My 2nd cousin is African-American. Our close friends are Cuban/Puerto Rican. As far as I can tell, my kids hang out with kids they are friends with, regardless of the racial thing.
My kids go to Korean Culture Camp each summer. My daughter called me to inform me that she had a boyfriend now. Apparently at the age of 11, that means that they danced together at the dance, and have declared that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. She hasn’t seen him since June, and IM’s with him. That’s just so very perfect. 
Anyway, her first boyfriend is a white boy, in a sea of Korean boys from camp. -Shrug- I didn’t read into it one bit, I don’t think it’s a rejection of her own ethnicity or anything. He’s just…the one that’s her first boyfriend.
My Mom dated an African-American fellow, I dated a few African-American gals. ( Dunno if there were any other ethnicities in there, I didn’t date much.). It’s what my mindset is, and so I instill that in my kids. They chose friends and hopefully will fall in love based on what’s inside.
Blood 'n Guts !!! 
Cartooniverse
Oh yes! I LOVE pre-teen “dating” in the 21st century! IMs, email, phone calls… very little actual contact with a member of the opposite sex - now that’s an idea a Mom can get behind!
My kids are multiracial (we prefer the term “mutt”). Since we currently live in Cincinnati it’s sort of like living in Bavaria, with lots of little Aryan kids running around. Actually almost every kid their age in our small neighborhood is Jewish, so we’ve had several discussions on religion. We even walked over once so my son could ask the Rabbi about Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. My son is five and full of curiosity. This week he asked me to tell him more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I assume this stemmed from a discussion at school. It’s kind of sad to have to explain to an innocent child that some people can have that kind of hate just because someone is different than them. Since we lived in several different countries when they were younger they’ve always kind of assumed that how people look is a function of the country that they’re from. When we moved back to the USA I had to explain that Americans look like everyone, and everyone looks American.
Last year he was invited to a classmates birthday party. The little boy’s first name is Swede (he’s actually Swede M. the third). I thought it was an intriguing name so I asked him if he had blue eyes and blonde hair. No, he has brown eyes and brown hair. So we got to the party and I met Swede and his family who are all African American. I have no idea how the Swede name got into the family, but it seems to have stuck.
My son’s best friend through middle school and high school was a hispanic girl. Now that he is out of college, his girl friend is white, but he rents a room from a African-American girl.
My daughter group in high school included Hispanic, African-American, Asain.
Her current boyfriend is Jewish.
I’m thinking that neither one of them has race issues.
My daughter is 16 and my son 17. Our family is white, BTW. Both of my kids have had, over the years, friends of varying ethnicity. When they were younger (in grade school), we had next-door neighbors who were black and had kids the same age. Our kids were all very tight until that family moved away (they were a Navy family and went overseas). This was in San Diego and the schools there were very multi-racial. Off hand, I can think of a number of other black kids they brought home plus a number of Hispanic kids. Doe (our daughter) was quite good friends with an American girl of Japanese descent and Nick was good friends with a boy who was Korean – his name was Albert and I always remember him because his parents were missionaries and he had lived all over the world. He spoke something like 6 languages. After a year or two, his family was posted to the Ukraine, of all places. A couple of years ago we moved here to Virginia. The schools here are somewhat less diverse than in San Diego, I think – more black kids, but fewer Hispanics and Asian-Americans. When my kids were younger, BTW, they seemed to just become friends with whoever was closest – neighbors mostly, or kids they sat near in class. Once they reached high school, they became a little more discriminating – they make friends now with people who share their interests.
Doe attends a charter School of the Arts and, although she is friendly with kids in her other classes, most of her core group of friends are fellow Literary Arts students. I’m sorry to say that there are no black students among the Literary Arts Sophomores. Her ‘clique’ does include one Hispanic boy and an Asian-American girl. And Doe herself adds to the diversity of her group – she is white, but also disabled. In fact, she’s the first orthopedically disabled kid to ever become a SOA student.
My son also draws his friends from among kids who are interested in the things he enjoys – he is on the wrestling team and has a number of close friends among his teammates. He has other friends who share his interests in boxing and weightlifting. Two of his closest friends are black, one is Hispanic and one is of mixed race.
Neither kid reports any stigma against inter-racial dating at their schools, BTW.
At my son’s elementary school about 50% of the children are Hispanic. My son has definitely noticed, mostly because they did a big topic on Mexico and the kids whose families are from there talked about their foods, culture etc.
But of his 3 best friends, 2 are Hispanic and one is white.
He is 6 by the way.
I got one of those comments from him that only happen when the school has such a large population of Hispanic students. One day he complained, “Mom, why do you give me such weird things to eat for lunch? I want the same foods as all the other kids have! Tomorrow pack me a tortilla with beans and cheese!”
Well, I’m not a parent, but as a 14 year old, I hopefully have something interesting to contribute.
In my old junior high, about half the class was white, and the other half wasn’t. Most of them were aisians, with some hispanics, blacks, and other ethinc groups thrown in. It didn’t seem like anyone really cared, or even noticed racial differences, and there certiantly wasn’t any stigma agianst inter-racial dating (I would’ve loved to go out with some of those cute aisian girls…:)).
I recently started high school. When I read this thread, it occured to me that most of the people in my current group of friends are white. The racial mixture is about the same, and I don’t think anyone would base friendships on race. I definately wouldn’t (especially with those cute aisian girls!:)), so I suppose it’s just a coincidance.
If my parents ever thought race was an issue, they’ve never expressed it.
I’m 17. I go to an urban school where the racial makeup is about 40% white, 60% everything else. Race does not matter, at all. For instance:
On my friend Emily’s birthday, I asked her who was coming. She replied, “Josh, Ian, Jesse, Sara, JoAnne, and you.” I said, “Oh, the usual group of white people.”
Josh is black, Sara is Mexican, and JoAnne is Vietnamese. Go figure.
Not that I think your child is racist- far from it. But I think this is actually a symptom of how much trouble we have even mentioning race.
Growing up, I had many more non-white friends than I do now. My high school was about 60% black, 30% white, and 10% Asian/Hispanic. There was some racial tension, but also inter-racial friendships. It was a shock to move from Charlotte, NC–a very large, multi-racial city with a big immigrant population–to Asheville. Though there’s black population that’s been here since the 1800s and a growing Latino population, it’s the most segregated place I’ve lived. Nobody talks about it; on the surface things are very nice; but black folks and white folks just don’t live in the same neighborhoods, hang out at the same places, etc.
Nah, I don’t think so. I doubt a 5 year old would be worried about that.
My son is 4 and his best friend is black (we are white). He has never once mentioned that Bryce looks any different than he does.
Actually, I don’t think she even noticed the racial difference. She wasn’t going out of her way to come up with descriptions of the kid that mentioned everything but race, it simply never occured to her that skin color might be an easy way to identify someone. At the age of five, she was much more interested in what kind of pet another child had, or what kind of funky-cool hair they had than anything else.
Now I notice that she’s quicker to ID someone by skin color, but I don’t think even now it’s the first thing that comes to her, because a couple of times recently I have met friends of hers of different races and I had no idea going in. For example, when she told me her friend Alex was going out with Chris, I sort of knew who Chris was, because she’d mentioned him several times. It wasn’t until I got to the dance to pick the kids up that I found out Chris was black, and it really didn’t seem to be an issue with ANY of the kids.
The story above reminds me.
My son’s family group leader (at his daycare) told me he had befriended a new kid, Kenta, who didn’t speak English. I was interested in what language Kenta did speak–the name Kenta made me think of Kente cloth, so I was thinking this kid might be from Africa, and speak something neat like Swahili or Dogon or Luganda. Or French, which I could teach my son some of.
So, too curious to wait until I could observe his class, I asked my son. He didn’t know where Kenta was from or what he spoke, so I thought I’d try to figure out if he looked African. I began the gentle probing about what Kenta looked like, but trying to make it seem like skin color wasn’t a big deal. Was his skin pinkish, like his? Or a nice brown like Victoria’s? My son really wasn’t very forthcoming; I really don’t think he notices. I’m sorry I asked for fear I introduced the idea it matters. Incidentally, it turns out Kenta was Japanese.
Anyway, my son is 4 1/2. His close friends are mostly white, except for Kenta who is Asian, but then he doesn’t have that many classmates who are of other races. He seems to find race unremarkable thus far–we know interracial couples and he doesn’t seem to notice, and he didn’t ask why Mary and Joseph were an interracial couple in the school’s nativity play. I don’t know if that’s because kids just don’t notice, or if it’s because (until this year) he’s always been around kids of many races.
I’m thinking it’s the former. Where we live, Zack doesn’t see many different races. There is one black boy in his preschool class (the best friend mentioned above), one half-Hawaiian girl, and that’s about it (there was a black girl last year). Then, he sees our Education Director at church, who is African. He really doesn’t seem to differentiate at all by skin color. For example, this is a child who asks me “why” questions about damn near everything, but has never once asked me why Bryce and Nya have really dark skin, or why he himself doesn’t.
Our neighborhood and my daughter’s school is about 50/50 white/various colors. Of girls she plays most with, two are black and one is white. She has talked about skin color, but no differently than she talks about hair color. To her it’s just a way to describe someone, which to me is the way it should be.
As an older kid, (18 now, actually) I just wanted to throw in my own two cents.
I remember elementary school rather well, one of my best friends I met a little before then and we had the same teacher every year and once in a while we get to talking about it. The part that I find most amazing is that at first I could not remember the ethnicities of any of my friends from elementary school. It wasn’t that I had a horrible memory or anything, I remembered all sorts of things we did back then, it just took me quite a while to remember that Maxcine was Philipino and that Darlene was Vietnamese etc.
Schools always did the “Celebrating Diversity” thing, but I truly believe that at those ages race just isn’t a big deal. In junior high we were all more aware of things but it wasn’t cause to discriminate.
In highschool I went to a school that prided itself on diversity it was about 50% various types of asian 10% white 10% african american and 20% various types of latino/hispanic etc. in addition to being about 60% female. We were incredibly aware of race in that we learned a lot about each other’s various races, ethnicities, and religions but it never precluded friendships or dating.
By my senior year I remember discussions where we were starting to worry about college not being as diverse as our highschool and thinking that would be a pretty bad thing. Another big worry was that none of us were politically correct by any stretch of the imagination. We knew jokes about every type of person under the sun, we knew all the stereotypes and all the misconceptions and how blatantly untrue they often were, and it wasn’t odd to hear kids joking about races, religion etc in the halls.
My pastey white, several generation Irish, friend, James, was regularly heard saying “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?” :rolleyes:
I really think that all it takes is exposure to different people to get the ball rolling towards acceptance. I know that 9th grade was a huge culture shock for kids that weren’t used to being around other cultures but I can honestly say that by senior year I don’t believe there was anyone in out graduating class of 144 kids that disliked anyone else just because of the color of the person’s skin… for other things, well, we can’t love everyone.
Kitty
I’m not a parent, but I do have a brother who’s a racist. Blatently, obviously, ridiculously racist. It didn’t happen until this year (he’s 14 or 16, I can’t remember now), and it’s really wield because our whole family did live in Singapore (of all places it’s a real crossroads of cultures and religions) for four and a half years. There’s also a lot of anti-semitism at my school (I live a New England suburb).