How to Talk About Racism with a 5-Year-Old: Books and Resources That Actually Work
We were standing in the produce section of the grocery store, and my daughter was inspecting a bunch of bananas with the seriousness of a botanist. Then she looked up and said, “Mommy, why is that man’s skin brown?”
The man in question was old, maybe in his seventies, and he was reaching for a bag of apples a few feet away. He heard her. My face went hot. I did what many parents do in that moment: I shushed her and whispered that we’d talk about it later. But later came and went, and I realized I didn’t know what to say.
I’m white, and my daughter is white. We live in a mostly white neighborhood. Racism is not something she has encountered directly, and it’s not something I have personally experienced. But I know that not talking about it isn’t a neutral choice. I wanted her to grow up with a sense of what fairness really means, and that meant I needed to find resources on anti-racism that were actually appropriate for a five-year-old.
The first problem was that a lot of what I found online wasn’t for her at all. It was for me. Long articles with definitions and structural analysis. Important, yes, but not something a child who still calls a butterfly a “flutterby” is going to sit still for.
So I started asking other parents what they actually used, not just what they had read about. A friend of mine, who is Black, told me that her daughter’s preschool teacher had read The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. I ordered it that week. It’s a simple story about a little girl who draws pictures of the people in her neighborhood and notices all the different shades of brown skin, from cinnamon to chocolate to peanut butter. My daughter loved the food comparisons. She spent a week pointing at my arm and telling me I was the color of a latte. It made the idea of skin color something to notice and describe, not something to be shy about.
Another book that worked well was Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard. It’s about a police shooting told in a way that young children can understand. I was nervous about that one. I read it to myself first, and I cried. But when I read it to my daughter, she mostly wanted to talk about the two kids in the story and how they became friends. She didn’t grasp the systemic part, which was fine. She got the core idea: some people are treated unfairly because of what they look like, and that’s not okay.
The book that surprised me the most was Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi. It’s short and rhythmic, but it’s not really a picture book in the cozy sense. It’s more like a list of principles. We don’t read it all the way through most nights. She likes to pick one page and ask questions. One page says, “Antiracist baby learns about social identity, and grows to be a true community leader.” She asked me what “identity” meant, and I fumbled through an explanation about how we are all different and that those differences are good. She seemed satisfied. I wasn’t totally sure I had the wording right, but I realized the goal wasn’t to deliver a perfect lesson. It was to keep the conversation open.
But reading books was only part of it. I noticed that my daughter’s toys and TV shows were overwhelmingly white. We didn’t have many dolls with different skin tones, and most of her favorite cartoon characters were white. That was a problem I could actually fix. I bought a few dolls with darker skin and curly hair. I stopped defaulting to the same streaming shows and found programs with more diverse casts, like Elinor Wonders Why and Molly of Denali. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just made it normal.
The harder part was helping her understand unfairness when it wasn’t about race at all. One afternoon, she was crying because a boy at the playground wouldn’t let her go down the slide, saying it was his turn even though it wasn’t. I used that moment to say, “That probably felt unfair, right? When someone treats you badly just because of something about you, like whether you’re small or a girl or have a certain skin color, that’s what we call injustice.” It was a mouthful. But she got it. She nodded and said, “That’s not nice.” That felt like progress.
I also had to learn to say yes to things I didn’t know how to explain. The summer we went to a Juneteenth celebration in the city, my daughter stared at the flags and the people dancing and asked, “Is this a party?” I said, “Yes, it’s a celebration of freedom for Black people.” She didn’t ask why they weren’t free before. I knew she would eventually, and I knew I would need better answers by then. For now, it was enough to be in a place where she could see joy and community and history all at once.
There were also conversations that felt awkward. At a family dinner, my father-in-law complained about “all this political correctness.” My daughter was sitting right there. I didn’t want to get into it, but I also didn’t want her to think that silence meant agreement. So I just said, “We don’t see it that way.” That was the whole conversation. She probably didn’t even notice. But I felt like I had to model something, even if it was imperfect.
What I’ve learned is that anti-racism for a five-year-old is not a curriculum. It’s not a stack of books that you check off. It’s mostly about responding to moments when they come up. My daughter still asks questions that catch me off guard. Last week she asked if the color of someone’s skin means they like different foods. I told her no, that’s about culture and where their family is from. She thought about it and said, “But I like pizza and tacos.” I laughed and said, “And so do lots of different people.”
Sometimes I worry that we aren’t doing enough. We live in a place that is overwhelmingly white, and no matter how many books I read or dolls I buy, she is still mostly surrounded by people who look like her. I can’t fix that with a shopping list. So I’m trying to be more intentional about the places we go and the people we spend time with. That takes more effort than I expected. It means driving farther to parks and events, and putting myself in situations where I’m the one who feels outside my comfort zone.
But I’m also starting to see that the goal isn’t to make my daughter feel guilty or confused. It’s to help her notice the world and ask questions. It’s to give her a foundation of “everyone deserves to be treated fairly” that will hopefully grow into something more sophisticated as she does.
I still don’t have a list of perfect resources to pass along. What I have is a small shelf of well-worn books, a handful of better conversations, and a lot of moments where I didn’t say the right thing but managed to say something. That last part matters more than I expected.
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