I made my Dad very proud of his parenting.
Mum and Dad decided between them that when teaching their offspring about the world (in that way that parents do) they would make no comment about skin tone and the like and would leave us to notice it for ourselves, on the basis that all people are equal and that sort of thing doesn't matter and so on and so forth.

A policy that bore fruit one day when i was about 4. I was with Dad and we were out at a museum, one of the RAF ones I think (possibly Hendon). He tells me we were sat in a cafe at lunch time, when I looked around me with an earnest expression. With a frown, I said:

"There are a lot of them here aren't there, Dad."

Dad knew precisely what I meant, and braced himself for it.

"A lot of what, Ben?"

"Browns".

He broke into a broad grin.

"And what are Browns, Ben?"

"People with brown skin".

I of course meant people of Afro-Caribbean extraction. It's now one of my Dad's favorite stories about my childhood. He's very pleased with how I'd worked it out myself and invented my own term for it, untainted by other's input.


On the same subject, one of my oldest friends apparently announced his knowledge of such things when on the Tube with his mum. He pointed and bellowed "Look Mummy! Chocolate Man!" She was mortified.
( mr_wicksy is.... old., Thu 17 Apr 2008, 21:26, 5 replies)

I've heard worse.
Someone I used to know had a daughter who was in pre-school. One day on the bus, she saw a black woman and said "Mummy, why's that gorilla got a handbag?".

O_O
(The Ghost of Stephen Foster, Thu 17 Apr 2008, 22:24, closed)

Ghost of Stephen Foster -
that's not unreasonable if said woman was fuck-ugly.
( Bob Todd whee, Thu 17 Apr 2008, 22:38, closed)

Isn't it terrible though how parents try and teach their children stuff like this
only for the Daily Mail/Express to try and undo it day after day.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 17 Apr 2008, 23:21, closed)

Yeah, assuming the kid had seen neither gorillas nor black people in the flesh before, and she was of largeish build and especially dark complexion, it's quite a reasonable assumption for a child to make. What with the facial bone structure of African people being different to caucasians, and indeed everyone else, in precisely the same way as that of certain simians. Purely because of a leftover physical trait that for no particular reason hasn't changed. Which is weird, because there's no evolutionary advantage either way. Fascinating stuff, anthropology.

Still, pretty damned unfortunate.
(The Ghost of Stephen Foster, Fri 18 Apr 2008, 15:18, closed)

Reminds me of when my little brothers went through a phase of playing with the names of their toys
In complete innocence they named Knitted Nigel (a rabbit) 'Nigger', believing it to just be a funny play on 'Nigel'. As my mother and I heard the soft sounds of "Get him, Nigger." drifting down the stairs, we realised there was going to have to be a talk...
(Skittlemcfluff ......................, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 0:26, closed)