WE WERE in the mad morning panic when my daughter asked me if I had something that would make her skin darker.

Taken aback, I stopped the urgent hurrying-along for a moment, and asked her why.

“I don’t like my white skin,” she said.

“Oh, no, I don’t have anything that can help you, sweetie. Why don’t you like your pale skin,” I asked as I smeared a thick layer of sun screen on her peaches–and-cream complexion.

“My skin is just too white — it’s not pretty,” she said.

There’s no way I can help her out. I am white. Her father is white too. There was never a chance she’d be anything but white. Hers is the straightest, not blondest, hair among her racially mixed bag of friends who have thicker, curlier, and some, frizzier hair than hers.

My child has heard about the horrible white men who once ruled South Africa, and how Mr Mandela and his friends liberated the country from this white rule. She is fascinated by the story of our country.

As parents, we’re desperate for our children to grow up happy with who they are — bien dans sa peau, as the French say. So it’s a worry when a child is literally not comfortable in her skin.

It’s pretty normal for children to resent their beingness at some stage. Perhaps naively. I wasn’t expecting an existential crisis of this kind at seven though. Not wanting to be white, for me, is a parenting problem to tackle with kid gloves.

A young Australian wrote recently that “white has become shorthand for everything from lame to awkward, to being badly dressed and shithouse at dancing”.

For her to be happy, my daughter must believe that it’s kind of cool to be white, even though white might have lost its currency. This is where Die Antwoord and Jack Parrow may become useful to me. But there’s not only white rap to be enjoyed, and it’s not just about being cool.

More important than worrying about the cool cred of being white she needs to appreciate, respect and enjoy the richness of living in a culturally diverse society, one like ours.

She must not have to feel the otherness she’s experiencing a little of now, nor must she ever make anybody else feel that alienation of otherness.

Not only my little girl, but everybody living in our melting pot should feel happy in their skins.

x This appeared in the paper on June 7.

Related posts:

1. Hairy or not? “Mores-of-pornography-that-have-made-it-into-my-pants”. Late last year I wrote a column about women shaving...
2. Young girls’ fat issues. Yes, really. Yesterday my 8-year-old moaned how she has got so fat....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.