Do kids notice race?

The short answer is "yes!"  The reason I am bringing this up is that I co-facilitated my Transracial Adoption Workshop a couple weekends ago.  It is one of my favorite activities as I like to see where people are at with all this and to compassionately challenge them to think in a different way.  We often have people who think that we are making too much of a big deal of race and all as parents we need to do is "love the child" and everything will be fine.  While I don't argue that loving a child can do wonders for many of the challenges of raising a child, the truth is: actually you need to do more than that to help your child develop a positive racial identity when that race is different from your own.  This workshop was no different save that the voices were stronger and more unified in the belief that we were making way too much out of race as an issue.  This is when my clinical skills kick in.  As a parent I can give a number of stories where strangers have said something to me about my daughter's race and her being adopted with her right there.  The clinician in me understands that if I challenge people too directly they will shut down and not hear anything and that is not helpful.  I found a way to address this without being too harsh and confrontational.  So, when someone challenged me with "So, do you think about race all the time with your daughter when something happens?"  My short answer is "yes."  I then explain that if something happens, I ask myself  "number one, could this be an adoption issue? and number 2 could this be a race issue?"  Most times the answer to those questions is "no."  But it is my responsibility as a Caucasian woman raising a Chinese daughter to ask those questions each time.  It is a check list that quickly runs through my mind.  Putting it this way seems to help people understand how it is different when raising a child of a different race from your own. 

To this point about kids noticing race, today in Maya's classroom (she is in 4th grade) her teacher was showing the class a slide show of his trip to South Africa and the schools and kids there.  One child raised their hand and said "All the kids are black and there are no white kids."  The teacher's response was thoughtful.  He said that he was one of the few white people there, that when he and his partner were flying over he noticed that they were in the minority which was a different experience than he normally had.  When he is in the United States, that he tends to be in the majority racially but there he was not. 

So my take away from all of this is
--yes, kids do notice race
--if you are in the majority race, Caucasian, and are thinking about adopting or have adopted across racial lines, it would be an enlightening experience for you to put yourself in a place where you are the minority race.  It will give you a taste of what your child may experience.  I try to do this quite often.  Just the other day I took Maya to dim sum and I was the only white person in the restaurant.  Maya was in the majority race and I was in the minority race.  This is important to help you understand and to experience what your child may be feeling.  I have not only done this and had Maya be in the majority race, but I have gone to places where neither she or I are racially represented.  So, not only do you need to read about racial identity development, but you have to live it and experience it.