Walking into schools and seeing children from different backgrounds, cultures, religion and colour working and playing in harmony is a sight to behold. Children are our futures and to have them create a community where there is no racial, cultural etc barriers are lessons for us adults to learn.

I hear people say young children don’t see colour , race etc in other children and that when they use racist language it is meaningless. This is not so. Children as young as six years understand racism. ‘ a six-year-old called another child “ghore” meaning white in Punjabi, as an insult because he was not allowed  in a his gang. When asked what it meant he said it meant white but could be used as a bad word and he had used it as a bad word. Where did he get this from? The adults around him at home.

I am sure some people will say this is naïve and may also call me a ‘coconut’  but is not time that we begin to talk about this and put our house in order so that when we claim racism against us we are not prejudicial too.