How to Find Anti-Racism Resources That Work for a 5 Year Old: A Parent’s Real-Life Guide
My daughter was four when she pointed at a woman ahead of us in the grocery checkout and asked, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Why is her skin brown?”
I froze. The woman turned around and gave a kind, tired smile. My daughter kept staring. I managed to say, “Because that’s the color of her skin, just like yours is light and mine is lighter. Isn’t it nice that people come in different colors?” The woman nodded at me—maybe in approval, maybe just to end the moment—and we moved on.
That night, I searched “anti-racism resources for 5 year olds” on my phone while my daughter played with blocks. I found lists. Long lists. Anti-racist books for kids, picture books, parent discussion guides, Instagram accounts, podcasts, action kits. It all felt like a lot. I wanted a script. I wanted a book that would do the work for me. But most resources were aimed at older children or at parents who already had language I didn’t have.
I closed the phone and decided to start smaller.
A few days later, I picked up “The Colors of Us” by Karen Katz at the library. It’s about a girl who draws portraits of the people in her neighborhood and realizes that brown skin comes in many shades—cinnamon, chocolate, peanut butter. My daughter loved the food comparisons. We got through half the pages before she asked if we could mix paint and make “her color.”
That turned into a Saturday morning project. We mixed red, yellow, white, and a tiny bit of brown to match the skin tones of everyone in our family. Then we tried to match each other. We painted paper people and stood them up in a row. For a five-year-old, this was enough. It wasn’t a heavy lesson. It was messy, concrete, and interesting.
After that, I stopped thinking of anti-racism resources as something to “get through” and started thinking about them as conversation openers.
One thing that helped was switching my mental goal. I didn’t need to explain historical racism or systemic injustice to a five-year-old. I needed to help her notice skin color without fear or shame. I needed to say, “Yes, people look different. That’s good. And sometimes people get treated unfairly because of how they look, and that’s not okay.”
I said that sentence in the car one day after she told me she didn’t want to sit next to a boy in her class because “he has dark skin.” My stomach dropped. But I kept my voice calm.
“His skin is darker than yours,” I said. “That’s part of what makes him who he is. It’s okay to notice, and it’s not okay to leave someone out because of it.”
She said, “But I like my skin better.”
Ouch.
We had a talk about favorite colors. She likes purple. Her friend likes green. I asked, “Is purple better than green?” She said no, they’re just different. I said, “Skin colors are like that too. They’re not better or worse. They’re just part of people.”
She didn’t have a deep philosophical answer. She said, “Can I have a snack?” and ran off. But I think that conversation didn’t need to go further right then. The point was to interrupt the idea that one skin color is “better.” At five, that’s enough.
The book “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi is often recommended. We tried it. My daughter liked the illustrations okay, but some pages were too abstract—”Instead, let’s transform that condition”—and she lost interest. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It just means some resources work better as grown-up scaffolding than as bedtime reading.
What worked better were books where race and skin color are present but not the whole plot. “All Are Welcome” by Alexandra Penfold shows kids in a school where families look and dress differently. My daughter noticed the hijab and the wheelchair and the different skin colors. She asked questions. The book gave us a way to talk about “what makes you, you” in an everyday setting. It wasn’t dramatic. That’s exactly why it worked.
Another good one was “Let’s Talk About Race” by Julius Lester, but I saved that for when she’s a little older. Some pages talk about how people tell “stories” about themselves and sometimes use race to judge others. It’s a beautiful book, but for a five-year-old, it needs a lot of explanation. I flagged it for later and didn’t force it.
What I noticed was that my daughter learned more from what I did than from what we read. She sees me talking with the Black mothers at the school gate, not just saying hello but actually chatting. She sees our playdates with families that don’t look like ours. She sees books on the shelf with characters who have brown skin, Asian skin, Black skin, Latinx skin, kids with moms who have different accents and dads who are the primary caregiver. Those details aren’t special lessons. They’re just the texture of her life.
That part is a little awkward to admit because it took me a while to get there. When you’re looking for “resources,” you often expect a book or a talk. But for a young child, the resource is really the environment. If the only time she sees a Black character is in a book about civil rights, she may start to associate Blackness with struggle. If she sees Black kids as princes, doctors, explorers, and neighbors, then race becomes ordinary, not scary or special.
I also started paying attention to her toys. She had a white baby doll for years. We gave her a Black doll with textured hair, and at first she didn’t want to play with it. I didn’t panic. I just left it out, next to the other dolls, and one day she picked it up and started brushing its hair. She asked, “Why is her hair puffy?” I said, “That’s how her hair grows. It’s beautiful.” Now that doll is one of her favorites.
A friend who does early childhood education gave me one more simple suggestion: role-play the unfair moment. At five, children understand fairness very deeply. So we practiced a small scene. She pretended to be the one saying, “You can’t play with me because your skin is brown.” I pretended to be the child who got left out, and I said, “That’s not fair. My skin is part of me. You can still play with me.” Then we switched. This sounds silly, but it gave her a script for what to say if she sees someone being excluded. She now says “That’s not fair” a lot. Sometimes about dessert. Sometimes about bedtime. But the phrase is there, and I can remind her that the same fairness applies to people.
We’re still figuring this out. I don’t have a perfect resource list. I have a shelf of library books that come and go, a few dolls, some paint trays, and a child who asks unexpected questions. A few days ago she asked why our neighbor speaks another language. I said, “Because that’s the language her family speaks.” She said, “Oh. Can we learn it?” Maybe we will. Or maybe she’ll be on to something else by next week.
I don’t think I’m going to get this all right. But I’ve stopped waiting for the right resource to make me feel prepared. The book isn’t the lesson. The conversation is. And as much as I’d love a perfect script, I’m learning that the most useful thing I can do is show up, answer honestly, and not look away when the questions get uncomfortable. That’s not the end of the work. But for now, it’s where my daughter and I are.
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