Dismantling colourism in kindergarten

Sangeeta Zombade and Priyanka Shrivastav

In a society obsessed with fair skin, how do we honour the diversity of skin colors in India? Recently, when we introduced Gatila, a children’s book, in our reading circle at Khoj Community School, we didn’t know it would turn out to be such a real experience of unpacking colourism with our senior kindergarteners.

Gatila is the story of a black cow who thinks she isn’t beautiful because of her colour. So every night she tries to paint herself with different colours. As the colours don’t stay for long, she realizes how her own black colour made her look beautiful and different from other cows.

Children in the community that Khoj serves (based on our own experiences of India, we can say it happens in most of our country), hear colour-based comments in homes and neighbourhoods such as, “kitni kaali hai shaadi nahi hogi (you are so dark, how will you get married?”, “koyele jaisa kaala (black like coal)”, and “kale-kaloote (black person)”.

Dark skin has been a matter of ridicule for a long time. Be it home and neighbourhood or media and public spaces, young people are bombarded with messages that put darker shades of skin down and equate being fair to higher standards of beauty. This, in turn, is often used to bully and put people down. With the book, we hoped we could process some of these messages and beliefs underlying them. The reading turned out to be an even more critical work, when a volunteer was teased, almost violently, by our students for his skin colour recently.

Amit* is a dark-skinned 16-year old and lives in the same neighbourhood where our students come from. He volunteered to support our children during one of our classes. When he came to the class, one of the Khoj kids started calling out names such as “kala (black)” and ridiculed him. Other kids followed. He tried to ignore the comments. Vanshikha*, one of the kindergarten kids, went to him, stood in front of him and said, “tu kala hai (you are black)” to ensure that he listened to the comments passed by her and other classmates. He was really upset after this incident.**

I gathered the class around and asked them, “What do you mean by kala?”

They did not respond. Then I reiterated my question.

After a while, without engaging in a direct response to the question, they said, “Unko bhaiya bolna chahiye (we should call him brother).”

I asked a new question, “What happens when someone has a dark skin?”

“Kuch nahi hota (nothing happens),” the kids replied.
“Then, why are we calling him kala?”

By then the class seemed to have figured out that something did not go well. They started acting jittery and were not willing to have a conversation. I stopped the conversation and continued the math activity in the class.

During our reading circle the next day, as we went on to complete Gatila’s story and debriefed, here’s how the conversation followed:
“What did you like from the story,” I asked.
Fatima replied, “I liked when Gatila’s colours washed away in the rain.”
“Why?”
Fatima, “O chamak rahi thi colours nikalne ke baad (She was shining after the colours were washed off).”

Rohit, who was also sitting in the circle, loudly said, “Kale kale” (dark skin tone).
Fatima replied to him, “Humare ankhe aur baal kale hai, to kya hum unko chidaate hai kale kale? Nahi na! (Our eyes and hair are black. Do we tease them? No, right?)”

I asked, “Are you happy with your skin colour?”
Fatima, “Yes”
“You have a beautiful skin colour,” I said.
Shahid and Anjali called out suddenly, “You also have a beautiful skin colour!”

Meanwhile, a few students started pointing out to other students with dark skin. Vanshikha was one of them. They were saying, “Ye log bhi to kale hai (These people are also black)!”

I asked, “To apko kya lagta hai, kya ye log bhi Gatila ki tarah khud ko colour laga le (Do you think that these folks should also color themselves just like Gatila)?”

Fatima replied, “Nahi, ye bhi acha colour hai, inko colour nahi lagana chahiye (No, they already have a good skin colour. They should not colour themselves).”

This was an opportunity for us to go back to the conversation from the previous day. I asked, “If you remember, humare class me ek bhaiya aye the, Amit bhaiya, humne unko bhi kale kale bola tha, to kya lagta hai unko colour lagana chahiye Gatila ki tarah (If you remember, we had a young visitor who had come to our class, Amit bhaiya. We had called him black. Do you think he should colour himself like Gatila)?” Gaurav, Rohit and Anjali said in unison, “No!”

I asked, “Let’s look at our hands and legs, ye colour acha hai ki nahi (Let’s look at our hands and legs. Do you think it’s a good colour, or not)?” Every student took turns to respond, “Mera skin colour acha hai (My skin colour is good).”

Then suddenly, Anjali and Shahid stood up and said, “Didi aap ka bhi colour acha hai (Didi, you also have a good skin color).”

“Living scholarship is embedded and embodied in the textbooks of students’ lives. The teaching task is to effectively orchestrate how the two types of scholarship, academic and personal – shelves and selves – complement each other,” writes Emily Jane Style in Curriculum As Encounter: Selves and Shelves.

Gatila indeed served a really important “shelf” resource to help our kids process experiences of “self”. While it offered many of our students “mirrors” into their own skin-colour-based experiences, for other students, it was a “window” into what these students have to go through. The opportunity for a circle time discussion offered the class to discuss a challenging subject without getting into the morality of it. Rather than correcting the behaviour, teachers involved the scholarship of selves, where Fatima could freely share her views to educate her peers and move them towards more accepting attitudes.

It’s important that young people have the opportunity to dialogue about their life experiences in a safe and non-judgmental space. At the same time, it becomes important for teachers to bring these life conversations into the classroom to build these social and emotional competencies from early ages.

*Name changed to protect students’ identity.
**The teachers and youth project facilitators separately checked in with Amit to create space for him to process his feelings.

With inputs from Rohit Kumar.

Sangeeta Zombade and Rohit Kumar are co-founders of Khoj Community School, an initiative of Apni Shala. She can be reached at sangeeta.zombade@khojschool.org. Priyanka Shrivastav is a kindergarten teacher and Youth SEL facilitator at Khoj Community School.