Six or seven peach crayons were scattered across the kitchen table, and my five-year-old was sorting them into a pile. She held one up next to her arm, then put it back. “Mom, this isn’t my skin color,” she said. “My skin is more like… pink and white and a little brown.”
I stopped what I was doing and sat down next to her. We held our arms side by side. I pulled out a tan crayon, then a light brown one, then a yellowish one. “It’s like paint, kind of,” she said. “Everyone has a different skin color.”
That was it. A small, ordinary moment. But it was also the moment I realized I had no idea what to say next. I had books on dinosaurs, feelings, and counting. I did not have a plan for helping my child understand race beyond the crayon in her hand. So I started looking for anti-racism resources that actually made sense for a five-year-old, not an adolescent or an adult.
Most of what I found online felt too heavy. Articles about structural inequality, privilege, and systemic racism are necessary, but they don’t work as bedtime reading with a child who still calls her nightlight “the moon’s flashlight.” I needed books, videos, and conversation starters that met her at her level. I also needed to get over my own awkwardness. It turns out that’s the biggest hurdle.
The first book we tried was Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi. I had heard good things, and it’s short enough to hold a young child’s attention. The text is simple, but some of the concepts still needed translating. When we got to the part about antiracism, my daughter asked, “What’s a racist?” I paused, then said, “It’s when someone is not fair to another person because of their skin color.” She nodded. “Like when someone takes all the blue crayons?” she asked. Not exactly, but it was a starting point. Fairness is something a five-year-old understands deeply. We used that.
More helpful, at least at first, was a book called The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler. It’s rhyming and upbeat, and it celebrates skin colors without getting abstract. It gave my daughter language to talk about differences without shame or awkwardness. After reading it a few times, she started pointing out skin tones in real life in a totally normal way. At the grocery store, she said, “That man has beautiful dark skin. He looks like cocoa.” I held my breath, but the man just smiled. Kids aren’t being rude when they name what they notice. They’re just observing the world. If I respond calmly and positively, she learns that noticing differences is okay.
That became a pattern. I stopped steering conversations away from race and started treating skin color like any other visible trait. I didn’t say “Oh, we don’t see color,” because that’s both untrue and confusing. Instead, I said things like, “His skin is darker than yours, and yours is lighter than his. Both are great.” It felt clunky at first. But it got easier.
Another resource that worked well was a short episode of Sesame Street about race. The characters talked about skin color, melanin, and why people look different. My daughter loved the word “melanin.” She walked around saying it to herself and once told me, “My body makes melanin, and that’s why my skin looks like this.” I didn’t need to explain more. She had a fact, a word, and a comfortable feeling. That’s enough for a five-year-old.
I also started paying attention to the diversity in our regular routines. Not in a forced, checklist kind of way, but in a practical way. Are the books on our shelf showing families that look like ours? Do they show kids with different skin colors, different hair textures, and different family structures? Not every book needs to be about race, but kids absorb messages from what they see. A book like All Are Welcome isn’t an anti-racism guide, but it shows a school where many kinds of kids belong. That matters, especially before kindergarten.
One thing I learned is that anti-racism for young children isn’t mainly about teaching the ugliness of history. It’s about building a foundation of empathy and fairness so that when they do learn about history, it doesn’t come as a shock. At five, that means noticing who is missing from a story and asking why. It means pushing back gently when a show or toy defaults to only one kind of hero. It means practicing how to stand up when someone is left out, even if the reason isn’t race.
There’s a website called EmbraceRace that helped me more than any single book. It has practical articles written by parents and teachers, and the tone is calm, thoughtful, and realistic. One article I remember explained that children as young as three notice racial differences and can absorb biases. Another piece gave exact phrases to use when a child asks a question like “Why is her skin darker than mine?” That alone was worth the time. It’s easy to feel like you need to have a perfect answer, but you really just need a few honest phrases and the willingness to say “I’m not sure, let’s look it up together.”
We also talked about what to do when someone is treated unfairly. My daughter has a strong sense of justice when it comes to playground rules, sharing snacks, and taking turns on the swing. I tried to connect that to larger ideas. “If you see someone being left out because of their skin color, what should you do?” She thought about it. “Tell them they can play with us,” she said. That was a start. She doesn’t fully understand the social weight of racism, and she shouldn’t have to yet. But she can learn to notice unfairness and speak up. Those muscles grow with practice.
Not every attempt worked perfectly. One afternoon, I tried to read Something Happened in Our Town aloud because I thought it would help explain why some people are treated badly. It was too much for her. She got anxious about the police and kept asking whether the person in the story got hurt. I put the book away and told her, “We’ll read this later, when you’re older.” That was the right call. Young children need reassurance more than they need graphic context. At five, the point isn’t to scare them into caring. It’s to show them that fairness matters and that people are working to make things better.
I’ve also had to accept that I’m still learning. I grew up in a mostly white town and didn’t receive much education about race until I was an adult. My instinct sometimes is to stay quiet because I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing. But staying quiet doesn’t protect anyone. It just leaves the conversation to other influences. So I’ve started practicing the phrases that feel new to me. Things like, “Our family has a lot to learn about race, and that’s okay” or “Different isn’t scary, it’s interesting.” I say them out loud more than I wish I had to, but they’re becoming more natural.
There’s no single resource that gives you the whole answer. A picture book gets a conversation started. A TV episode gives your child words to use. A website gives you language for the follow-up questions. Then you have to weave it all into ordinary life. It’s in the grocery store, at the playground, during bath time, and in that moment when you’re sorting crayons at the kitchen table.
My daughter still has questions. Yesterday she asked why there weren’t any people who looked like her in a story we were reading. I said, “That’s a good thing to notice. Let’s find more books where the characters look like you.” Maybe I should have had a better answer. But I’m learning, too. We’ll keep reading, keep talking, and keep noticing. The conversation doesn’t end; it just changes shape.
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