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A London mom is going viral after sharing that her two-year-old child realized she was Black after going to daycare.
In an Instagram video, Joy Mbakwe said she hadn't talked to her young daughter about her race before she attended daycare. Mbakwe told Newsweek she felt "shock" when her daughter came home and announced that she was Black.
"I had not anticipated that we would have to explicitly speak to her about race until she was older," she said. "For her to be just two and describe herself as 'Black' was both saddening and shocking. Although we are proud to be Black, it is not without its consequences."
Mbakwe said daycare staffers told her that her daughter may have learned the term from an older child.
In her video, Mbakwe detailed the difficulties of navigating racial identity and Blackness in the West.
"If I was living in Nigeria and I had her, I would never say to her, 'You are Black.' We would just be Nigerian."
"Although some Black people in the diaspora find the term empowering, other Africans who migrate to the West are often surprised by the way the term is handed to them—and how they can often be defined by the negative stereotypes that the word carries," she added.
Mbakwe called on nurseries to acknowledge their "responsibility" to treat young children with care as they become aware of their physical differences.
"Children become aware of physical differences as it pertains to race as young as six months old," she told Newsweek. "When children are between the ages of two and three, they can begin to show racial biases. Nurseries absolutely have the responsibility to be culturally and racially sensitive, and radically inclusive in nature. However, I believe parents should lead the conversation first with their children."
Following her daughter's realization, Mbakwe said she's reading and reviewing literature on anti-racism to better educate her child.
"Not all feel appropriate or communicate my own personal values about race," Mbakwe said. "It's a sensitive topic and I have to be careful that I am empowering my child as well as educating her."
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