Boy 'trying to scrub off black skin' after cruel racist comment in Cambridgeshire
A dad has shared the terrible and heartbreaking moment when he found his five-year-old son 'trying to scrub his black skin off'.
The kid, from Cambridgeshire, apparently took the desperate action after a girl in his class refused to invite him to her birthday party because of his black skin.
The das tried to sit his boy down to have a discussion about race after the incident, which happened around a year ago.
The boy had also tried rubbing dandelions on his arm in the hope of making his skin white, the dad reported.
The father said: “I had to talk with my five-year-old son about race a year ago. I came up into the bathroom and found him in the shower, scrubbing himself hard with a towel.
“My wife and I asked what he was doing and his response still upsets me now. He said, ‘a girl in my class didn’t invite me to her birthday party because of my skin colour.’ He was trying to scrub his black skin off.”
“The two incidents left my wife and I quite angry but we had to keep cool and think of the mental impact this will have on our little boy and his confidence moving forward.”
The two parents tried to explain to their son he was so much loved, and it did not matter what colour of skin he had.
The pair started showing their boy the different colours of people he knows, to try to convince him that everyone is unique and perfect, whatever their skin colour is.
The father added: "There will be other parties to go to, but I got the sense he particularly liked this girl.
“I thought as a dad I was shielding him from (racism) until the time was right to sit down and explain it to him. Someone took that opportunity away from me. I was upset.
"In my wonderful world I had dreamed for him, he wouldn’t have been dealing with this at his age.
"In a way, I’m glad it’s happened to him then, because I’ve seen it hasn’t affected him. He hasn’t processed it in the way adults do.”
The dad added that he chose to 'blank out' the girl's name and instead tried to empower his son so any further incidents would not affect his confidence anymore in the future.
He added: "To me, the girl is irrelevant. It’s how my son deals with it that’s relevant, his emotional and physical wellbeing.”
Unfortunately, children are the ones who suffer the most from racial discrimination that might have a huge impact on their mental health.
Similar to this terrible story, those who attended the Black Lives Matter socially distanced protest on Christ’s Pieces in Cambridge on June 6 will have heard Munya Jiri’s story of growing up in the area.
The 23-year-old talking about racial injustice declared: “From about the age of seven was the first time I started facing almost direct racism.
"I hit secondary school and bad words like monkey, slave, were said to my face daily.
"When you have these things said to your face daily, it destroys you, brings you down. You start looking in the mirror and saying 'God, why do I look like this?'.
"I used to go on the internet, I used to go on Incognito, delete my search history so I could Google things like 'how to bleach my skin' so I could be lighter.
"I thought 'oh, I'll go to school looking lighter, everyone will like me more.'
"I was looking at ways that I could straighten my hair, all these things that young black boys and girls are going through."
He added that secondary school is a time when people build their image of themselves, however for most black people it is when they learn they will always be second.
Mr Jiri added: "We will never be seen as equals and we'll always be the ones to be thrown underneath the bus."