How I Found Anti-Racism Resources for a 5-Year-Old (Without Losing My Mind)
The question came at the worst possible moment, in the middle of swim lessons. My five-year-old pointed at another child in the pool and said, loudly, “Why is that boy’s skin brown?” The other mom heard. The boy heard. I heard myself say, “Everyone has different skin colors, honey,” which was true and also completely useless.
Later that night, after the kids were asleep, I opened my laptop and typed “anti-racism resources for a 5 year old.” I was not prepared for what happened next.
There were reading lists. There were podcasts. There were Instagram accounts for kids and parents. There were study guides for books I had never read. There were decades of scholarly articles and think pieces. There was a board book called Antiracist Baby, which felt promising, and then about eight more books with the word “antiracist” in the title. I sat there for an hour, feeling less like a parent and more like someone who had accidentally enrolled in a graduate seminar at 11 p.m.
So I closed the laptop and did what I should have done first: I ordered a few picture books and waited.
The first one to arrive was Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race. It has real photographs of kids and pages about how skin gets its color. There’s a part that says “Some people think that skin color makes us different. But really, skin color is just one of many things that make us special.” It also talks about unfairness and what “racism” actually means in a simple, direct way. My daughter asked me to read it twice the first night. The second time, she interrupted to tell me about a girl at school who had “blacker skin than mine.” Then she said, “She’s my friend.” That was it. We kept reading.
What surprised me was how calm the book made me feel. I expected to have a heavy, prepared conversation. Instead, the book did the work. It gave me words I could say out loud without crying or overexplaining. And over the next few weeks, I noticed that those words started slipping into our regular conversations.
At the grocery store, my daughter said, “That man has a funny accent.” I used the phrase from the book: “There are lots of ways to speak. His home language might sound different to us, but it makes sense to him.” She thought about that for a second and said, “Maybe he speaks Spanish.”
We started reading more books. The Colors of Us by Karen Katz is about a little girl who describes all the shades of brown around her — cinnamon, chocolate, peanut butter. My daughter went around the house pointing at things and declaring, “This blanket is the same color as me.” All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold shows a diverse school where kids wear different clothes, eat different foods, and learn side by side. It’s less a lesson and more a picture of how things could be. I Am Enough by Grace Byers has a line about loving who you are, and my daughter repeats it to herself when she’s feeling proud.
Not every book worked. Something Happened in Our Town is recommended for kids around her age, but it starts with a police shooting and a funeral. I flipped through it after she went to bed and decided we weren’t ready yet. That’s okay. I realized something important: not every good book is good for every child right now. A five-year-old doesn’t need to be scared into understanding injustice. They need to understand that different isn’t wrong, that unfairness exists, and that they can talk about it without being punished.
What ended up being more useful than any single book was changing my own behavior.
I grew up with the idea that the best thing to do was not see color at all. That is the kind of thing adults tell themselves to feel comfortable, but at school pick-up, it looks like ignoring differences or pretending they don’t matter. With a five-year-old, that doesn’t work, because they notice everything. They’re constantly cataloging who is like them and who isn’t, and they’re trying to understand why people look, speak, dress, and live differently. If I say “We’re all the same,” my daughter will quickly find seven examples of how we are not. She’s five. She’s paying attention.
So instead, I started doing what one teacher friend called “talking about it like it’s normal.” When we ride the bus and she notices that mostly Black kids on the route aren’t the same as her school friends, I say, “Yes, our neighborhood is mostly white. People live in different places for many reasons.” When a character in a movie has a non-English accent, I don’t skip over it or pretend accents don’t exist. I say, “She sounds different than us. That’s because she grew up somewhere else.”
It sounds simple, but the hard part is that I constantly want to make things better by making them smoother. I want to say, “That doesn’t matter, let’s all be friends.” But that’s more about my discomfort than her curiosity. When I stop and just answer the question she’s already asking, she gets what she needs and moves on.
I also had to do some adult-only reading. I bought a copy of Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey, which isn’t meant for children. It helped me understand that silence itself teaches something. My daughter is picking up cues from me every time I avoid a topic. I can think I’m staying neutral, but she’s learning that race is something we don’t mention. That’s not neutral. That’s a lesson.
There are also small practical things that made a difference. The school library now has a shelf with books featuring kids of many backgrounds, and we take out a rotating stack. At home, I stopped waiting for “teachable moments” and started treating these conversations like brushing teeth — something we do a little bit, regularly, rather than one dramatic conversation. I look for books with Black, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous characters where those identities aren’t the whole point of the story. A child having an adventure is enough.
And I have to be honest: I still don’t feel great at this. I don’t have a script for when she asks questions about police violence or why some people are treated badly. But I’m learning that’s not the goal. The goal is to be a parent who doesn’t shut down, who doesn’t change the subject, who sits with the awkwardness and answers as best I can.
Last week, my daughter showed me a picture she drew at preschool. It was of her, a girl with dark skin, and a boy with a hijab. They were holding hands, standing under a rainbow. It wasn’t profound, exactly. But when I asked her who they were, she said, “My friends. We’re all in the same class.” She didn’t mention anything about their skin color or the hijab. She just wanted me to see that they were together.
I think that’s the point. Not to force my child to explain the complexities of racial injustice at five. Just to let her see that different is worth noticing, worth naming, and worth talking about.
I ordered another book this morning. It’s about a kid who learns to celebrate his name. She’ll probably ask why the name is hard to say. And for once, I won’t be searching for a resource. I’ll just tell her: because every name came from somewhere.
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