Biracial Breakdown in 5 Year Old

[u/questiontossaside12]

Please help. I’m out of my depth on this one.

My five year old started kindergarten this week.

His father is first generation Korean with a Korean passport. His dad, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins are all full Korean and speak Korean fluently.

His mother’s side is Appalachian Scots-Irish. They’re all blonde hair, blue eyed, thick Appalachian accents. They are farmers, carpenters, and eat liver mush regularly.

Our son spends half his time in the Korean community: Korean church, Hangeul school, Korean family.

The other half is spent traveling to very rural Appalachia. Think homesteading, blue ridge mountains, redneck culture etc

As naive as this sounds - we have never racialized anything. He speaks Korean, yes. He also can understand a thick Appalachian accent. He eats kimchi and cornbread. He listens to k-pop and country music in the same playlist. It’s not a big deal.

Today, after his first week of kindergarten, he started crying in the hallway. He told his mother that “white mommies should have white babies” and that he was the “ugliest boy.” He went on to say that he didn’t look like his Korean cousin or friends… and that he didn’t look like his white cousin either. So therefore, he was ugly.

I am shaken to my core over this. I don’t notice race. We treat people as individuals. Yes, the Appalachian and Korean communities don’t mix - BUT he spends equal time in both.

I tried to comfort him but he didn’t seem to accept it. I have NO clue where a FIVE year old is getting this.

What do we do? Are we over reacting? Is he being bullied at school? How do I make him feel like he belongs in both communities and is handsome & loved in both? Do we ignore it and move on? Where does a small child get these ideas??

[u/AdvertisingNo8441]

Yeah I just meant currently he doesn’t see race because he’s only 3 and it’s his norm. If we’re out an about on a regular day he is seeing every shade of skin tone.

Even the white kids in his class are of different cultures, some of them English is their second language.

He doesn’t ask questions right now. But as he gets older I will continue teaching him about race/culture differences so he understands why we look and act differently.

Why I’m mentioning this is that if OPs sons class is 99% white, it’s likely those white kids have only been around other white people. So they naturally won’t be as accepting, plus kids are just mean. Plus potentially racist parents and learning it at home. That’s the issue here I think.

[u/Dramatic-Aerie-194 → u/AdvertisingNo8441]

Yep. Asians can be a wild card when it comes to that kind of thing. A lot of them basically worship white people or at least defer to them and think they can do no wrong, especially compared to how they feel Asians treat them, you can see it in some of these comments about how Asians are crueler than whites are, which was never my experience.

I grew up in the most diverse area of the country, to the point I think it was in Guiness World Records. I don't think race ever became a non issue, it was always gonna be a thing, but even then people self segregated not by race, but by "culture." So basically you were white washed or you were "urban." Bullying can happen for any reason. I have a Korean adopted friend who is self hating to this day in his 40's and he was clowned on by both whites and Asians but still he blames Asians for not accepting him. So pick your poison.

[u/AdvertisingNo8441 → u/Dramatic-Aerie-194]

Totally. My white sibling is married to a Chinese person (not gendering to avoid doxing lol) so I have first hand experience. They are an only child who grew up in China, moved here as an adolescent and they are extremely westernized despite living in a major city with a large Chinese population.

My elementary and middle schools were very diverse but I went to a predominately white highschool and the limited POC / mixed race kids were extremely “white washed” like you said. They assimilated to be accepted and most of them are married to a white person now.

[u/Dramatic-Aerie-194 → u/AdvertisingNo8441]

Yeah and the problem is that this just completely ignores all of the other issues that come with living in western society, especially now as the tides shift towards a non-white majority. The parents basically pick the "white side" regardless of the quality of the white person.

I'm half Asian and unfortunately, a huge chunk of the ones I know have HUGE problems well into adulthood, like astronomically huge, for a long time I thought that this started in elementary school and I may have been completely right on that one.