Dear Anti-Racist Parent,
My four-year-old daughter was humming “Brown Girl in the Ring” this morning… catchy song. I wasn’t thinking much about it at first, and then the words started to sink through my skull:
Brown girl in the ring
Show me your motion
She looks like a sugar and a plum.
I don’t know what to think about this. Jamaican friends tell me it’s a traditional West Indian children’s song. Does that make it okay for my non-African family to enjoy it? Is there more of a history that we should think about?
My husband and I are white and our two kids are Chinese. Our family is consciously anti-racist, yet we don’t want to seek it out where none exists.
Thank you (and your readers) for any insights you can provide.
Suze
Buffalo
From the Editor:
Why are children’s nursery rhymes such a minefield? I mean when you really dig into some of the verses we routinely recited as children, you get a cavalcade of racism, sex and ghoulishness.
One little, two little, three little Indians
Four little, five little, six little Indians
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians
Ten little Indian boys.
Rise, [Little] Sally [Walker], rise
Wipe your weeping eyes
Put your hand on your hip
And let your backbone slip
Aaah, shake it to the East
Aaah, shake it to the West
Shake it to the one that you love the best.
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Looks like you’re in the clear with ”Brown Girl in the Ring,” though. Not being familiar with the rhyme or the associated game, I Googled around for some information. The full rhyme goes something like this (there are variations):
First verse There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
There’s a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
She likes sugar
and I like plum
Second verse Skip across the ocean
Tra la la la la etc.
Third verse Show me your motion
Tra la la la la etc.
Tra la la la la etcFourth verse Wheel and turn your partner
Tra la la la la etc.
Tra la la la la etc
According to Wikipedia, this rhyme is thought to have originated in Jamaica and is sung as part of a popular “ring game.”
Ring games are played in many parts of the world by boys and girls, especially in their preteen years. In Alan Lomax, J.D. Elder and Bess Lomax Hawe’s There’s a Brown Girl in the Ring, an anthology of Eastern Caribbean song games, it is suggested that ring games are a precursor for children to adult courtship.
The players form a ring by holding hands, then one girl goes into the middle of the ring and starts skipping around to the song. The girl is then asked “show me your motion”, at which point she does her favourite dance. When she is asked “show me your partner”, she picks a friend to join her in the circle.
The “brown” girl (or boy) in the ring traditionally refers to children’s skin tone prevalent in the Caribbean and it is thought to enhance their self esteem.
There is nothing inherently wrong with your Chinese children referring to a “brown girl.” When the popular Australian group The Wiggles perform the song on their show, they omit race and refer to a girl in a brown shirt. I may have missed something in my brief research, perhaps a Caribbean reader can shed more light on the origins and potential challenges of this rhyme.
At any rate, as an anti-racist parent, you are smart to think about the seemingly innocuous rhymes and songs that you pass along to your children.
Tami
Tami,
Thank you for your response … our daughter did pick it up from the Wiggles, and I admit I was kind of shocked about the possibility of an otherwise good preschool program including something antisocial in its content.
Suze
Actually, there is another version (I believe the original) of 10 Little Indians that is even more offensive. It’s 10 Little N*****s. Agatha Christie wrote a mystery with this title!
When I saw the title, I thought for sure you were talking about Ten Little Indians. We have a toy that plays that tune, among others, and when it comes on I always sing “One little, two little, threelittleNativeAmericans” and giggle a little.
Taj Mahal sings this song on his children’s CD- his roots are partially from Carib.
Great CD by the way!
I am American and live in Australia with my Dutch husband. I have a brown son and a pink daughter. Recently I toured a highly-recommended school on a day when the children were doing special presentations. When we arrived, the children were performing a folk dance to the song “Jump Jim Crow”. Though I was unfamiliar with the song, the lyrics caught my attention. Later, after a little research, I discovered that the song was written by a white comedian for the show he performed in black-face. Long story to say that so often, children’s songs and “folk tunes” go overlooked as potentially racist or stereotypical material, while they may contain some very innapropriate themes, as Tami pointed out.
In a situation like mine, where the Australian educators are so far removed from the cultural context of a very old song, I wonder how receptive they would be to hearing my complaints about it? The experience really influenced my decision about the school though!
Closer to home, I’ve had a confrontational experience over the 10 Little N******, with a member of an older generation, from another culture, who learned the song as a girl, and had trouble understanding why it made me so upset. I’ve found that outside of America, where there is no shared cultural context, I’ve had trouble convincing people of the damaging and racist origins and influences of children’s songs like these. When the songs themselves come from another cultural context, it is even more confusing!
Kind of off-topic: I recommend (for readers 12-13+) the book Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. I read it a few years ago in my Science Fiction/Fantasy literature course, and loved it (I’m also in love with it because it’s set in Toronto, so I can relate to the setting a bit more).
/done being off-topic
I’m not from the Caribbean but my husband is, and I lived there for several years. “Brown Girl” is a great song. On his island, it is one of many “moonlight songs” that were sung back in the days when families went for strolls in the moonlight together and played in the villages under the stars and bright moonlight with their friends and neighbors.
When I was in training as a Peace Crops Volunteer we were asked to learn some of these moonlight songs. In doing my research I realized that these songs are slipping away with the older generation because most people stay in at night and watch television now.
We love to sing “Brown girl” in our family and always view it as a source of pride about color (and not exclusive to West Indians or brown skin people either!). I say sing and enjoy!
I just wrote this, and then erased it for fear of a collective “how could she possibly have not known this,” but I only found out the original words to “eeny, meeny, miney moe” a couple of years ago, when I was already 40+! I bet I learned it when I was 4 and certainly used it all through elementary school. I had always only known the second line as “catch a tiger by the toe.” I started to say it at work one day and a co-worker who was mabye 15 or 20 years older than me was shocked after just the first line, because apparently “Tiger” was not the original word in the second line. Once he pointed it out, the rest of the rhyme became more apparent in its offense: “If he hollers make him pay, Fifty dollers every day.” The last line is why we used this rhyme in the first place–to pick someone to be on your team or to give something to, “My mom says to pick the very best one and you are not it” You would go around in a circle and point to each person with each word and see who it landed on with the last word. (of course you could change it to “and you are it” if you wanted to throw the result.)
We all used it, and when I told my sister she also was surprised and never knew–thought it was a common rhyme among kids. At any rate, knowing the original context, I would never use it now or teach it too my child.
What’s hard when racism is ingrained in a society is that we (not sure who we is–caucasian? Majority culture) use things as part of what we view as ‘mainstream’ society but it turns out are really prejudices or have an awful historical context. I still remember being on an 8th grade trip in Washington DC and I called an African American cab driver ‘boy.’ I was going through a phase where I playfully called everybody ‘boy’ and had no idea the history or offense of calling someone that. Luckily one of my classmates new better and told me that could be offensive. 30 years later I still wish I could find the guy and apologize.
My husband and I sometimes use the term “idiot” for someone who seems not to know the obvious, but my child has learned in school that idiot is a bad word, so we try to focus on the positive, like “well, at least he knew to ask a question,” or “at least sh/he changed behavior after learning”. I hope I can do a good job raising my own child, to pass on what I have learned and to guide him through mistakes to grow into a person confident in his own cultural identity and in his interactions with others.
Question for Deanna or others, if eeny meeny miny moe had racist beginnings, and people realized it was not appropriate and changed it to tiger, is there still something wrong with it? What if we change tiger to George Bush? Is it the tune and the other words that are problematic? Does the memory of it being racist make it always so? Can we believe that rather than censor the good parts of culture because they contain bad parts we can change the bad parts and make them all good parts?
my daughter came home with a similar rhyme from kindergarten (not in the US, so wont get into specific terminology). i dont think she had heard the term used before, so i stopped her, asked if she knew what it meant, and discussed why it might be hurtful to some people. she looked horrified, then came up with an alternative word (‘a cute girl’) and wanted to know why whoever wrote it would even use an offensive word if they had nonoffensive alternative that got the same point across.
There are also children’s rhymes that aren’t necessarily bad to sing, but that get used in preschools and whatnot without any discussion of the context. Like that “pick a bale of cotton” song. Gah.
My kids, who are black and bi-racial, are very fond of the Wiggles. This particular rhyme has always baffled me in terms of its meaning. I think we misheard the lyrics as “she looks like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum,” which made no sense to us. Thanks for clearing this up for us.
Maree B. — I’m pretty darn sure the Wiggles song IS saying “she LOOKS like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum.” I know that’s the way I’ve heard it too, and I also wondered if that song was offensive.
Another nursery rhyme that bothers me is “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” I haven’t changed the color of the sheep, but I have changed the following words to say: “one for my neighbor, one for my friend, one for the little boy who lives at the end.” I don’t like the “master” language that the traditional version uses.
Nursery rhymes are truly awful sometimes! It’s like the earliest chance kids get to be indoctrinated with all kinds of unconscious bigotry!
I have stumbled upon this website in an effort to answer a question posed to my husband and I regarding the pending adoption of our child from another country. We have to describe our plan to incorporate our new son’s culture into his life. He’s not yet born, has not yet experienced nor will he have the opportunity to experience his own culture until he is much older (b/c it costs a lot of money to take the family on a vacation to another country). He will be in America before his first birthday. They want to know what words I will use to talk to him about racial differences. My husband, and I adopted our first son from Korea four years ago and so far, this has not been an issue we are from a small, yet internationally diverse community. I know he and the new baby will face questions growing up, but we are a family who wishes to embrace not our differences, but our similiarities. To embrace both our american and asian heritages, to explore and promote to our children anti-racism, our desire is to teach jusitce, mercy, humility, equality. All words that come to mind other than those seem racist — perhaps because I am not of an ethnic origin that has suffered any racial comments, but I am struggling with this question because it seems like “words” will not help my child if he is experiencing issues related to his cultural background. Please help me to describe the words that mean what I am trying to convey — that I want to teach my kids that its what is inside that matters, that identifying them with racism before they even are born seems predestining them for being treated differently. I need help to explain this to the adoption agency that seems obsessed with our compliance to not allow our child’s cultural heritage to be forgotten. Not a question in the packet addresses how I will feed him, clothe him, protect him, discipline him, or educate him, only how I will treat his heritage. This seems to promote his ethnic differences rather than allow me to teach him to naturally embrace his own culture and that of others. Any help and if I am a blithering idiot who is naive and ignorant, please feel free to help me with that too.
I live in Germany and was horrified to hear that my son was playing an (apparently common game ) in his gym class called “who’s afraid of the black man?”
I told the teacher that I personally found the words offensive and that coloured children in the class might also feel really bizarre singing these words.
Her reply was that she had explained to all the class beforehand that the song was about a chimneysweep and none of the kids had a problem with it and were completely happy.
She basically told me I was overreacting and making an racial issue where there wasnt one.
I am lost for words. I have a meeting with her next week to discuss further.
I am not quite sure though how to get through to her as she obviously does not see a problem there.
I talked to my son who is asian about it and he understood what she had said and was okay with playing the game, but definitely understood how some might find it offensive.
What would you advise me to say to the teacher?
Hi Brenda,
I think you are approaching the question in a completely wrong way, and need to turn around 180 degrees.
However, you are right when you say that “words” will not necessarily help. But words are an indicator of actions, and it seems like you are not willing to act at this point. I hope you don’t read this as an attack, because I really mean it as a pep talk.
Your children WILL BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. Your wishing it won’t be so is not going to make it a reality. I can’t stress that enough… you have to look at the world as it is, not as you desire it to be. You can read numerous transracial adoptee narratives to find out about the negative effects of being raised in that kind of fantasy world.
And keep in mind that saying “mixed Asian and American heritage” is pretty insulting to many of us who are Asian-Americans. It just reinforces the idea that American=white. I’m not mixed Asian and American, I’m a 100% American who happens to be Asian.
Try approaching the issue in a more concrete, practical way. Put your own emotions aside and realize that this is not about your mixed feelings of guilt, fear, resentment, etc…. you have a job to do for the future good of your children, and you need to get to work. Read through this site, also look up the Teaching Tolerance materials at http://www.splcenter.org. Work up a lesson plan. How are you going to make sure your child has contact with non-adopted children of their same race/ethnicity? What resources and groups are there in your community? Are you prepared to move to a different community if your own proves to be not so good for your children? How will you directly respond to racist bullying from pre-school on up?
Less agonizing, more strategizing.
If you ever read carefully through a big book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, there are so many that have racial undertones, even with pictures of slaves working the fields and white children with whips in their hands. I can’t recall the specific poem that example came from, but it was in the book for sure. My mother gave it to my son as a gift even though I warned her about them, but she didn’t listen. When I went over them with her, she still didn’t get it. We are Armenian, and I am first generation, so it’s understandable that she does not get it since she didn’t learn about it in school, she has not experienced it, etc.
It really is sad that we are left with these prejudiced imprints on our children. We do our best to keep them away, and teachers ignorant to this stuff go and teach them! When my son was in second grade, his teacher tried to sing/say nursery rhymes with the children for “literacy” reasons. To fulfill parent volunteer hours, she gave me packets of rhymes to color in the pictures for, and I was shocked. First, I wondered why the hell my son had to learn this crap, then I wondered, hey wait! they are in second grade! what gives with the preschool s***! So I talked to her about it and she expressed how shocked and concerned she was that they didn’t know any nursery rhymes. Oh, how sad. And I thought it was sad enough that they don’t learn about powerful and positive leaders and writers like MLK, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and so many more.
you go girl tina k. you broke it down at the end. to be Black and not colored like the woman from germany said makes me very proud.but my people have and to this day suffered the greatest of sufferation. to be killed off is one thing but to have to live as an animal and be treated as so. to have suffered rape by the so called master, families torn apart. father sent one place mothers sent another and to this day we have many single parent households, where children suffer without a father to teach and protect them. the mother absent working 2 and 3 jobs just to make ends meet.
now the wiggles takes a song about a brown skin girl and puts a girl in a brown shirt with a crown on her head is racist because if they are going to use a song about a brown skin girl use a brown skin girl and put the crown on her head. white people do this shit all the time sending racist subliminal messages to the fragile minds of children. with all the songs in the world to sing why this one. they should have left the song along period and leave it to black people to sing.
but oh no they just love to take whats positive to black people and turn it into a racist piece of crap. children arn’t racist. they are taught racism by adults like the wiggles and parents who don’t speak up.
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is an English nursery rhyme, sung to a variant of the 1761 French melody Ah ! vous dirai-je, Maman. The original form of the tune is used for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the Alphabet song. The words have changed little in two and a half centuries. In England where I live, you will often see flocks of sheep with the odd one with black wool. Black wool is very prized and more expensive than white wool due to it’s rarity. THAT is why it is emphasised in the nursery rhyme, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the colour of people’s skin. The person singing to the sheep is after prized black wool to give to the master, dame and little boy down the lane. Sadly all the politically correct brigade and do-gooders have created offence where there was none intended.
I’ve sung and played this singing game with British children in schools for thirty years, but I have always taken Leonora Davies’ approach and changed the words to “There’s a dancer in the ring … for (s)he likes sugar and I like plum”. That way all boys and girls can join in the fun without feeling self-conscious. Occasionally, when I have had an opportunity to use this song with older ones I have had a chance to discuss with them different versions of the song and why we might want to change the lyrics.
I am British and have a small pre school in Uganda. We are practicing a dance routine for Brown Girl in the ring for our end of term production. Most of our children are Ugandan although some are of mixed parentage including my son. Does this make me racist as well? Please!