As much as we’d like to believe we live in a colorblind world, we don’t. Race is often a hot-button issue, mainly because of how it impacts the way people move through the world. Some people think it’s wrong to point this out to kids, but it’s important for them to learn. Mom Joy Mbakwe was shocked when her toddler came home and announced that she is Black. It wasn’t a conversation the family previously had. The girl’s realization allowed the mom to open the door for meaningful affirmation for her toddler.
Mbakwe, who is also an educator, shared a reel on her Instagram account that sparked an interesting conversation. She opened the video saying that her 2-year-old daughter came home from nursery school and announced that she is Black. “Daddy is Black, Mommy is Black, and I am Black,” the little girl said. Mbakwe was taken aback by her daughter’s comment.
“I have never told her that she is Black before,” the mom admitted. “Sometimes being Black feels in response to whiteness, and there’s something that’s quite uncomfortable about that. I don’t think white people go around telling their kids that they’re white. They just can be.”
“If I was living in Nigeria and I had her, I would never say to her, ‘You are Black.’ We would just be Nigerian,” Mbakwe said.
Since her daughter opened the door for the conversation, she shared that she was beginning a “race curriculum” to teach her daughter. They’re now using a collection of books to talk to her daughter about skin color and racial identity.
“Should we tell young children what colour they are?” she asked in the post’s caption. “What purpose does it serve?”
“I’m a fan of tell them early,” one mom responded. “Blackness is definitely an experience that is in direct response to whiteness. Which is exactly why I’ve made it very clear to my children that they are Black and it is glorious, before it could be pointed out to them in a negative light.”
Another user felt similarly writing, “We have to tell them before the world does so we can frame it how it’s meant to be framed.”
“I had not anticipated that we would have to explicitly speak to her about race until she was older,” Mbakwe told Newsweek. “For her to be just 2 and describe herself as ‘Black’ was both saddening and shocking. Although we are proud to be Black, it is not without its consequences.”
The mom reinforced that racial descriptors were used to maintain hierarchies. But she understands how people feel differently about using these racial descriptors. And while she believes that nursery and preschools “have the responsibility to be culturally and racially sensitive,” she believes the conversation should start at home.
“It’s a sensitive topic and I have to be careful that I am empowering my child as well as educating her,” she said.
