Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Actually Works For Everyday Parenting
Last month, I was pushing my 5-year-old, Ezra, on the swing at our neighborhood park, half-watching him cackle while I checked the grocery list on my phone, when he pointed straight across the playground and said, loud enough that the whole picnic bench turned, “Mom, why is that man’s skin brown and mine is peach?”
I fumbled through a quick, quiet answer on the walk to the car – something about how people have all different colored skin, just like we have all different colored hair, and it’s all okay. The man waved at us from across the playground like it was no big deal, but by the time we got home with our gallon of milk and box of popsicles, I was already googling. I’d known this moment was coming, but every resource I’d saved up until that point was for older kids. What was actually appropriate for a 5 year old who still thinks it’s funny to fart at the dinner table and can barely sit through a 12-minute cartoon without getting up to get a snack?
What I found first was pretty discouraging. Most listicles were full of either dense books about the civil rights movement that went way over his head, or expensive activity kits that promised to “raise an anti-racist” but looked like way more work than I had time for on a weeknight. One article said I needed to start teaching him about systemic inequality right now, which I tried to wrap my head around, but how do you explain that to a kid who still thinks the tooth fairy leaves money under your pillow because she loves collecting teeth?
I started requesting whatever looked age-appropriate from the library, testing out different options over the course of a month, and I’ve figured out a few things that actually fit into our routine, and a few that didn’t. The first dud was a big picture book about Martin Luther King Jr. that I’d seen recommended everywhere. Ezra looked at the pages for two minutes, then asked why all the people were standing around by water fountains, and when we were going to read his favorite Elephant and Piggie book instead. The concepts were just too abstract for him – he couldn’t grasp what segregation meant, and the whole thing ended up feeling like a confusing chore instead of a conversation. The activity book I ordered online ended up in our junk drawer too; half the activities required crafting supplies I don’t own, and the one we tried (a timeline of civil rights) ended with Ezra coloring the whole thing blue and asking for a popsicle.
The first thing that worked was a slim, brightly colored book called The Skin You Live In. It rhymes, it’s only a little over 30 pages, and it doesn’t talk about hard history at all – it just talks about all the different colors of skin people have, how our skin is what holds us together, and how we can be friends with anyone no matter what color their skin is. When we read it after dinner the first time, Ezra immediately held his little hand up to every hand printed on the page, comparing it. “Mine is the same as this one,” he’d say, pointing. “This one is darker than mine. This one is lighter.” It wasn’t a big speech, just a kid being curious, and the book let that curiosity happen instead of shutting it down.
Another hit was the old Sesame Street Coming Together clips I found on YouTube. One 10-minute episode talked about how different people have different hair, and it showed little kids with all different textures and styles laughing and playing. I put it on while I was folding laundry one Sunday, and Ezra didn’t even realize it was a “lesson” – he just laughed when Elmo tried to braid Cookie Monster’s fur. By the end, he pointed at his cousin’s photo on the fridge and said, “Zara has curly hair like that girl, it’s so pretty.”
What I’ve realized, through all this trial and error, is that 5 year olds don’t need the same resources that older kids or adults do. Their brains work in concrete, simple terms – they notice differences, they’re curious about them, and that’s it. They don’t need to process heavy trauma or learn complex systemic ideas right now. What they do need is for us to not shush their questions, and to give them small, everyday ways to see that difference is normal, not something to be scared of or avoid talking about.
A small change I made that cost almost nothing was picking up a $12 set of multicultural wooden family figures for Ezra’s play table. He plays “grocery store” and “restaurant” with them every afternoon, and now he automatically includes all different skin tones in his games without me saying a word. It’s not a big lesson, it’s just part of his play. Another book that’s worked well is Last Stop on Market Street, which is just a story about a boy riding the bus with his grandma, and noticing all the different kinds of people in his neighborhood. Ezra just likes the guitar player on the bus, and that’s enough – he doesn’t need a deeper meaning right now.
Last week, we were standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, and a woman wearing a sparkly blue hijab was in front of us. Ezra leaned over to me and said, loud but not rude, “Mom, that lady’s head covering is really sparkly.” Instead of shushing him like I almost used to do, I just nodded and said, “It is really pretty, isn’t it? Different people wear different things that are special to them, just like you wear your dinosaur sweatshirt that’s special to you.” The woman turned around and smiled, and said she got it for her birthday.
I still don’t have it all figured out. I still save articles that feel too advanced for Ezra, for when he’s older. I still fumble sometimes when he asks a question I don’t know how to answer. A lot of the “must-have” anti-racism resources I see online for little kids feel way too overwhelming for our chaotic everyday life. But right now, having two good books to read before bed, letting him play with toys that show all kinds of families, and answering his simple questions honestly instead of changing the subject seems to be working. We don’t have to get everything right today. We just have to start small.
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