An interesting thing happened in my family this week. My wife (will remain in Nam) took my 4 kids to visit family in Dallas. My sister in law hosted them for two days. They had a great trip that consisted of visiting with my wife's mother and grandmother, 4 generations together!
My sister in law (we are white) has a black woman who has worked for her for many years who has become a part of the family. I don't want to betray anonymity so let's just call her Jenny. Well, all of the ladies, including my 7 and 8 year older daughters were in the kitchen wen my daughter says to Jenny, "Jenny, when you were growing up what kind of cookies would you leave for Santa?". Jenny (~60 years old) then responded as follows and I am quoting this exactly...
"Girl, Santa doesn't eat cookies in the hood, he eats fried chicken wings and biscuits"
When my wife returned with my kids my daughter ran up to me and said "dad guess what", she then repeated exactly what she heard including accent and tone.
How does a responsible father handle this? Jenny was obviously being goofy and funny but how do I explain to my daughters the sensitivity? We live in a very nice area that is also very diverse. We have a Chinese family and an African American family on our street, my kids don't know what racism is and to my knowledge don't have any racist influence in their life. Still, I don't want them to think it is ok to talk about fried chicken in the hood for obvious reasons. As we all know, the second they repeat that in public they'll be dubbed racists. It would be incredibly inappropriate for her to allude to that quote in any way in front of our neighbors.
Thoughts?
My sister in law (we are white) has a black woman who has worked for her for many years who has become a part of the family. I don't want to betray anonymity so let's just call her Jenny. Well, all of the ladies, including my 7 and 8 year older daughters were in the kitchen wen my daughter says to Jenny, "Jenny, when you were growing up what kind of cookies would you leave for Santa?". Jenny (~60 years old) then responded as follows and I am quoting this exactly...
"Girl, Santa doesn't eat cookies in the hood, he eats fried chicken wings and biscuits"
When my wife returned with my kids my daughter ran up to me and said "dad guess what", she then repeated exactly what she heard including accent and tone.
How does a responsible father handle this? Jenny was obviously being goofy and funny but how do I explain to my daughters the sensitivity? We live in a very nice area that is also very diverse. We have a Chinese family and an African American family on our street, my kids don't know what racism is and to my knowledge don't have any racist influence in their life. Still, I don't want them to think it is ok to talk about fried chicken in the hood for obvious reasons. As we all know, the second they repeat that in public they'll be dubbed racists. It would be incredibly inappropriate for her to allude to that quote in any way in front of our neighbors.
Thoughts?
