Before I begin sharing my thoughts on this topic, I’d like to preface it by saying this is only my suggestion and one thing I can do as a POC raising children in today’s world is to raise awareness. I am in no way telling you how to parent but I feel compelled to share my recent conversation with my daughter and her experience as a 6 year old and how words may impact kids differently. I am also not an expert, just sharing my thoughts as a mom of two.
A little bit of background information on our family – we are a Korean American family living in North Carolina. My husband is a 2nd generation Korean American, born and raised in Chicago/Chicago suburbs. I immigrated from South Korea when I was 11 years old with my parents and younger sister. While my husband and I both are more comfortable with American culture than Korean, we were raised fully immersed in Korean culture as well. We both ate Korean food growing up for almost all the meals, we went to a Korean school, a Korean church, and our parents spoke to us in Korean. We both have our fair share of personal experiences with racism which I believe helps seeing things through a different lens.
Parenting is hard as is, even without the complexities of raising POCs in America. I just wanted to share my recent conversation with my 6 year old daughter who just started 1st grade in hopes that maybe it’ll help shape some of your dinner conversations with your kids on this topic, regardless of your ethnic backgrounds.
It was a very casual conversation that turned somewhat serious. Em shared with me that when she told her classmates her favorite food, one of the classmates said, “Ew, what is that? that sounds gross!” Her favorite food is a Korean dish, seaweed soup. Now, I know 6 year olds find a lot of food gross and yucky. Mine does too, but we’ve always redirected her to not react negatively to food because everyone likes different things and people eat food from all over the world. Plus, it’s just rude to make negative comments about food in general, imo. But what made me sad was what she told me afterwards – “He probably thinks it’s gross because it’s seaweed and it’s Korean.” This is when our conversation turned somewhat serious. I hated that she felt that way! I hated that maybe she now feels hesitant to share a piece of her identity with her friends. I reaffirmed her that she should be proud of eating and trying all kinds of different food and that she gets to experience different cultures. Em then segued into a different but similar conversation she had with another classmate. She said, “so and so said, ‘you are Chinese, you look Chinese.'” I asked her how she responded. Em corrected him and said her grandparents are from Korea. Without hesitation, the first thing I said to her was, “you are Korean American.” Honestly, it also made me sad to emphasize American, not because I think America is so great, but because I didn’t want others to make her feel “less American” because she isn’t White. I explained to her that she is fortunate to have two different cultures, Korean and American and that she should be proud to be Korean, never feel ashamed to be Korean. We then talked about the difference between ethnicity/race and nationality. I could see her wheels turning in her head trying to absorb this information which can be hard to grasp for some adults let alone a 6 year old. While I was secretly very fired up having this conversation, the whole conversation was quick and nonchalant for Em. And part of me wanted to keep it that way, to protect her innocence, to protect her a little longer from the feelings I feel when the race card is played in our day-to-day life.
I share all this not to tell you how to parent but for those who may not have known that it starts very early. I should have known but I was also not on my game to have this conversation with Em. And we will definitely revisit as I’m sure my kids will inevitably experience more microagressions, intentional or not. I think it’s always good to be proactive and have these conversations with your kids, regardless of your race or if it makes you feel uncomfortable or if you think it’s too early. It’s never too early. Teach them about different ethnic backgrounds and how to respect one another. I also recognize that these kids may not have insinuated racial microaggressions but what may be a casual, thoughtless phrase can be an impactful one for the receiver. While I’m thankful that these experiences may not have impacted Em too much at this time, I know it eventually will. I will always fight hard to raise kind, empathetic, confident, proud children regardless of where they stand in this society. I truly believe change happens at a dinner table with our kids. If you made it this far, hope it gave you a difference perspective and perhaps made you think about your dinner conversations differently.
-m
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