Anti-Racism Resources for 5-Year-Olds: A Parent’s Practical Guide to What Actually Works
My daughter came home from preschool and said, “Mom, we had to draw a picture of our friend. I wanted to color Zoe’s skin brown, but Mrs. Patel said we should all use peach because that means no color. But Zoe’s skin isn’t peach.” She looked confused. I did too.
I’d been reading articles about how it’s never too early to talk about race, but I had no idea what that looked like for a four-year-old who still slept with a stuffed bunny. So I went looking for anti-racism resources designed for tiny humans. I assumed there’d be a clear shelf at the library, a curated list from some expert, a simple answer. There wasn’t.
The first book I ordered had gorgeous illustrations and a plot about protests. We got through two pages before my daughter asked why the police were on a horse. The second book was about a boy who experiences discrimination in first grade. My daughter asked if the mean teacher was coming to our house. I shelved both.
For a while, I felt like I was failing some assignment I hadn’t signed up for. But then I stopped trying to replicate a curriculum and started paying attention to how she actually learns. Five-year-olds don’t understand systemic racism. They do understand fairness, belonging, and who gets left out of a game. They notice skin color, hair texture, and physical differences long before we speak about them—usually around toddlerhood. My daughter had been pointing out people’s skin tones in grocery stores for months. I just hadn’t known what to say.
That’s when I shifted from finding resources to finding entry points.
The first thing that worked was making skin color visible in ordinary places. I bought a box of crayons with different skin tones—the Crayola “Colors of the World” set. I handed it to her and said nothing. That afternoon, she attempted to draw herself, then me, then our neighbor. For the first time, she had to actually mix and match. We ended up with a family portrait where my husband looked vaguely like a seal, but she was thrilled. We started talking about matching colors: “This one is almost like your arm; this one is like mine.” It wasn’t a lesson. It was just drawing.
Books helped more when they weren’t explicitly about racism. We read The Snowy Day for the third time, and she asked why Peter’s mom wasn’t in the story. I said I didn’t know, but pointed out that Peter’s skin is brown, and looked at how the illustrator drew snowflakes landing on his hood. We read Last Stop on Market Street and talked about why some people sit close to the bus driver, why others are in wheelchairs, and why CJ complains about the rain. It wasn’t a conversation about white supremacy. It was a conversation about a boy and his nana.
Meanwhile, I kept a running list of books recommended by actual early childhood educators. Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi is short and rhythmic, but I found it wasn’t very useful as a read-aloud for a five-year-old—it’s more for the grown-up to internalize. The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler was better because it celebrates skin colors through rhymes and diverse characters. But the biggest hit was Something Happened in Our Town, which covers a police shooting—I skipped most of that page and focused on the part where the kids play together anyway. My daughter’s takeaway was that a boy missed his dad, which is a big enough feeling for her to hold.
The real turning point came when I stopped trying to do anti-racism as a special project and started weaving it into daily micro-moments. In the checkout line, she pointed at a woman with a headwrap and whispered, “Why is her hair like that?” Instead of shushing her, I said, “I don’t know, but it looks beautiful. Maybe we can learn about headscarves sometime.” Then I let it go. She didn’t need an anthropology lecture—she needed to know it was okay to notice differences and to hear that I find them worthy of respect.
I also stopped assuming that silence is neutral. The most practical thing I did was change the toy rotation. We bought a set of wooden figures with a range of skin tones, not because they were “educational toys,” but because when you only have white dolls and white animal figurines, you’re teaching something without saying a word. The same goes for puzzles, masks for pretend play, and even the fruit section—we talk about mangoes from the store and papayas from our friend’s garden, and my daughter already absorbs the idea that the world isn’t a monochrome place.
One evening, we watched a short video from the website EmbraceRace about why people have different skin colors. The woman speaking explained that melanin is like a sunscreen built into your body. My daughter turned to me and said, “So my skin has sunscreen?” I said, “Yep. And mine barely does.” She laughed and said, “You’re going to burn, mama.” We left it at that.
I’m still not good at this. The other day, she asked why a boy in her class was adopted from Ethiopia and didn’t “look like” his parents. I gave a long, fumbling answer about how families are made in all different ways. Halfway through, I realized I was talking more about geography than adoption. But she was satisfied. She said, “Okay. Can I have crackers?” Then she ran off.
The resource list I ended up with is short but realistic. It doesn’t include all the heavy academic texts or every picture book about Civil Rights heroes. For a five-year-old, I rely on:
– Crayons, playdough, and dolls with varied skin tones
– Everyday books with characters of color that aren’t about race
– Short videos from EmbraceRace and Sesame Street’s “The Power of We”
– Direct answers to direct questions—usually no more than two sentences
– Modeling what it looks like to admire someone else’s appearance without pity or exoticism
I’ve also learned to apologize when I get it wrong. If I misgender a character or say something clumsy, I correct it out loud. My daughter doesn’t need perfection. She needs to see that questions about race are safe to ask, and that noticing differences isn’t bad—it’s the first step toward respecting them.
I don’t know if we’re on the right track. Some days I feel like we’re just avoiding mistakes rather than building understanding. But last week she brought me a drawing she made of our family and hugged me. Everyone in the drawing had a different shade of marker on their face—my husband’s is a bit orange, mine is too light, hers has a gap where she didn’t color in completely. It wasn’t anatomically accurate. It was just her trying. And that felt like enough for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Anti-Racism Resources for 5-Year-Olds: A Parent’s Practical Guide to What Actually Works