“I think the big brown guy is going to win,” my girl said the other night as we watched Shaquille O’Neil take on Oscar de la Hoya in the boxing ring on his “Shaq Vs.” show.

She’s just turned seven and still refers to people’s skin color in the same way she might describe a crayon; and while I think that is rather adorable, I do sometimes wonder how long others will think it is cute. At what age do we need to teach our children to use descriptions like African-American and Asian-American? And how do we teach them when to use Latino vs. Hispanic? Or the difference in Native-American and Indian (as in our across the street neighbors from India)?

I know that my own insecurities and fears of saying the wrong thing make me unsure of how to proceed in this area, and it turns out I’m not alone.  Here in my own town, The University of Texas has been studying Caucasian (white?) children’s racial attitudes, and it appears that I’m not the only one who has problems discussing race with their kids.

According to Newsweek, the researcher was “taken aback—these families volunteered knowing full well it was a study of children’s racial attitudes. Yet once they were aware that the study required talking openly about race, they started dropping out.”

According to one blogger on the National Post Comment section, that “confirms what many people probably already thought: white children in Austin, Texas are racist.”

Wow!

That’s exactly the sort of thing I fear that keeps me from being comfortable discussing race with my daughter - doing it wrong and risking being pegged racist. But, the study indicates that not calling attention to racial differences does not mean our children will grow up to be colorblind, no matter how much we wish it.

Those families that did follow through with the study and talked openly about interracial friendship showed a dramatic improvement in their children’s racial attitudes. So, how do those of us not getting scripts from a university handle it?

I’ve asked the question among some of my white girlfriends before, and none of them seemed to know how to do it either. Often it seems something easier left to the school system to try to broach, but I’m not sure that’s really what I want to do.

My girl’s Daisy Girl Scout troop had a session on diversity last year, in which one of our African-American moms talked about race - but, even that was again in the context of crayons and how a picture looks so much better when it has more than one color.

This UT study indicates that sort of wishy-washy description doesn’t really cut it for what I ultimately want to accomplish. Turns out my pride in the diversity of that same Daisy troop doesn’t mean it is going to teach those girls to be colorblind either. Another UT researcher in that same Newsweek story says of desegregation in schools:

“It’s an enormous step backward to increase social segregation,” she says. However, she also admitted that “in the end, I was disappointed with the amount of evidence social psychology could muster [to support it]. Going to integrated schools gives you just as many chances to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them.”

So what is a parent to do? It would appear, much like preparing for “the talk” about sex, we also need to plan for more talk about race. I’m going to try to be honest with my girl and admit that I don’t really know when it is appropriate to use the terms Hispanic, Latino or Mexican-American. I won’t plan a big sit-down conversation, but rather will look for ways to weave it in when opportunity presents itself (much the same way I’m approaching discussions of sex at this point). But, I better prepare myself.

Better me talking to her about race than these guys.

Have you discussed race with your child? What tips can you share to help me and others prepare? Do I need to correct my daughter when she equally uses “brown” as a descriptor for African-Americans, Indian-Americans and Mexican-Americans?