Looking for Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds? Here’s What Actually Worked
I was wiping crushed Goldfish crumbs off my kitchen table last spring when my 5-year-old daughter, Lila, climbed into her chair, leaned across the table, and dropped her question mid-sip of leaky apple juice. “Ms. Rosa said Javi’s skin is brown because his grandma is from Puerto Rico. Why is mine so pale?” I froze. I’d known this question was coming eventually, but every resource I’d stumbled on before felt like it was for kids twice her age. That night, after I’d brushed her teeth and read her two bedtime stories, I sat on my grape-juice-stained couch scrolling Google, searching the exact phrase that brought you here: anti-racism resources appropriate for a 5 year old.
I went down a deep rabbit hole that night. I found long lists of academic articles for parents, chapter books for early readers that were too hard for Lila to follow, one board book that tried to explain systemic unfairness in 20 pages that left me confused, let alone a kid who still can’t remember to put her socks on the right feet. Another set of resources leaned hard on “we’re all the same inside,” which felt wrong to me—Lila just asked why we’re different, and pretending we can’t see the difference doesn’t make racism go away. I felt that familiar parental guilt, like I was already falling behind on doing this right. I texted my friend who teaches pre-K at Lila’s school, venting that I couldn’t find anything that fit.
She texted back 10 minutes later: 5-year-olds think in snacks and umbrellas, not systems. Stop looking for a big lesson. Look for stuff that answers their actual question. That changed everything.
First, I picked up Skin Like Mine by LaTashia Perry from our local library, on her recommendation. It’s a short, rhyming picture book that compares different skin tones to things 5-year-olds actually know—honey, peanut butter, marshmallow, coffee, chocolate. No big words, no heavy history, just celebration of how different everyone looks. Lila wanted to read it three nights in a row, and after the first night she spent 20 minutes sorting our fruit snack bag by “what color matches who.” I didn’t stop her. That little game got her comfortable talking about skin color out loud, instead of whispering about it like it’s a secret, which is half the battle at this age.
Next, I found a 3-minute SciShow Kids video about melanin that frames it as tiny little sun umbrellas in your skin. The more umbrellas you have, the darker your skin is, and the more it protects you from the sun. Lila thought that was the coolest thing ever. She ran to the mirror after watching, pulled up her sleeve, and counted “one umbrella, two umbrella…” under her breath. That answered her original question about why skin is different, simply, concretely, no extra stuff she couldn’t process.
I used to think I needed to introduce all the hard parts of racism to Lila right now, that if I didn’t, I was failing. But my friend reminded me that 5-year-olds only have the capacity to handle so much. Unfairness is something they get, though—they understand when someone doesn’t let another kid play just because they’re different. So we practiced one simple phrase she can use if she sees that happening: “That’s not okay, you can play with us.” When we went to the playground last month, she heard a little boy tell another Black kid he couldn’t play on the slide because of his skin. She marched right over, said our phrase, and pulled the kid onto the slide next to her. I didn’t have to do anything.
What I’ve learned is that the best resources for this age aren’t expensive curriculums or 40-page workbooks. They’re small changes you can make to your everyday routine that don’t take extra time. For example, when I pick out new picture books for the library, I just make sure half of them have main characters that aren’t white—we’re not reading a book about racism every night, we’re reading a book about a little girl who loves dinosaurs who happens to have brown skin. That’s it. It normalizes difference without making it a big, scary topic.
I also stopped shushing Lila when she points out someone’s skin tone in public. I used to panic and elbow her when she’d say “look mom, that lady’s skin is like chocolate!” which taught her that talking about difference is bad, which is the opposite of what I want. Now I just smile and nod, and if the person hears it, I apologize softly if needed, but Lila’s just curious, not being rude. It’s better to answer her curiosity openly than to make it a taboo.
I still don’t have it all figured out. Last week, Lila came home asking why Javi’s grandma speaks differently than my mom, and I answered that she grew up in a different place, which was enough for her right now. In a couple years, she’ll ask harder questions, about why some people are treated badly because of their skin, and I’ll find new resources for that age. But right now, the small stuff works. We don’t need big, heavy lessons to raise a kid who cares about fairness. We just need simple, honest answers, books that show all kinds of kids, and practice being kind when we see someone being left out.
The other day I found Lila drawing a picture of her class, and she colored Javi’s face brown, mine beige, her own the color of a peach, and wrote “all good skin” at the bottom in wobbly capital letters. That’s enough for me, right now. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be honest.
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