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Young white children’s
(not so) innocent wonderings
about skin color
Nadia Norling Tshili Klarsgaard
Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Abstract
Issues of race and racism in early childhood education remain under-researched in Denmark—a
country where the ideology of equity is particularly prevalent. However, international research
on race and racism has long shown that children as young as three to four years of age can express
stereotypes and develop prejudicial attitudes related to race, leading to exclusionary social beha-
viors. This article presents a microsocial analysis of how skin color becomes a socially constructed
site of power and access in children’s social processes of differentiation. The article is written from
the perspective of childhood sociology and is based on participant observations from critical
ethnographic-inspired fieldwork conducted in a Danish kindergarten. The analysis shows how nor-
mative whiteness orientates two white five-year-old boys’interpretations of a four-year-old Black
girl’s dark-complexioned skin. By extension, the article discusses why young white children’s
meaning-making wonderings about skin color should not be considered an innocent everyday
part of kindergarten life. Finally, the article considers the role of early childhood educators
when emphasizing the importance of recognizing early childhood education settings as critical
sites in the (re)production and disruption of contemporary issues of race and racism.
Keywords
childhood innocence, childhood sociology, early childhood education, racialization, skin color,
whiteness
Introduction
“You can’t come here; your skin is brown.”Those were the last words I wrote in my field journal on
a sunny day of spring as I observed children interact on a Danish kindergarten playground. The
words were uttered by Anders,
1
afive-year-old white boy, as he stretched his arm out toward
Corresponding author:
Nadia Norling Tshili Klarsgaard, Oslo Metropolitan University, Pilestredet 42, 0130, Oslo, Norway.
Email: nak@ucn.dk
Empirical Research
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
2024, Vol. 0(0) 1–14
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14639491241297282
journals.sagepub.com/home/cie
Yolanda, a four-year-old Black girl, to make sure she did not come any closer to the hammock
where he was sitting.
In the paradigm of childhood sociology (Corsaro, 2018; Gulløv, 2021; James et al., 1998; James
and Prout, 1990), children are considered competent interpreters of the social world in which they
actively engage in meaning-making processes, (re)negotiating competing discourses that they
encounter in their daily lives—for example, about skin color (James and Prout, 1990; Robinson
and Díaz, 2005). Studying children in their own right is crucial when aiming to gain an insight
into how children engage in meaning-making processes. Based on ethnographic studies of chil-
dren’s peer cultures in the United States and in Europe, William Corsaro (2018) has argued that
children creatively draw on information from the adult world when producing their own unique
peer cultures. These findings correspond with the findings of the Danish anthropologist Eva
Gulløv (2021), who has explored how young children collectively build up understandings of
their social and cultural environments and in doing so socially distance themselves from some
peers and not from others.
Although joy and friendship are central in children’s peer cultures, processes of social differen-
tiation begin in early childhood where children show great awareness of their statuses and roles and
construct a variety of strategies for including and excluding peers. Though processes of social dif-
ferentiation among young children are often related to gender (Corsaro, 2018), Corsaro also finds
that racial categories are constructed in children’s language and interactions, with skin color being
central to how children see themselves (Corsaro, 2018; Corsaro and Fingerson, 2006). These find-
ings echo other international studies on issues of race and racism in early childhood, which have
found that children as young as three to four years of age can express stereotypes and develop preju-
dicial attitudes related to race and skin color, leading to exclusionary social behaviors (e.g.,
Patterson and Bigler, 2006; Van Ausdale and Feagin, 2001). Children are not naïve about racial
matters, though this idea is a dominant belief in the Danish and international field of education
and schooling (Van Ausdale and Feagin, 2001; Yang, 2021).
The belief that race and skin color do not matter in children’s social interactions is referred to as
‘colorblindness.’
2
‘Colorblindness’builds on an ideology of equality and refers to the idea that
ending racism is merely a choice of not noticing race or skin color (Bell et al., 2016). In the
Nordic welfare states, where the ideology of equity is particularly prevalent (Gullestad, 2004;
Hervik, 2001; Lundström and Hübinette, 2022; Myong, 2011), the notion of ‘colorblindness’
serves to silence the term race, which, in a historical context, tends to evoke notions of biological
racism associated with slavery, apartheid, Nazism, and World War II. Consequently, race is con-
sidered a historical phenomenon we have long put behind us (Gullestad, 2004; Hervik, 2001).
The often benevolent notion of ‘colorblindness’in the name of equity reinforces and sustains
racial inequities by overlooking that race—as a social construct used initially for the purpose of
domination—has cumulative and enduring consequences for people from different groups in
society (Bell et al., 2016; Doane, 2017).
A reluctance to engage with race has delayed the expansion of theoretical understandings of
racism and racial inequities in the Nordic countries, both in and outside the field of education
(Loftsdóttir and Jensen, 2012). However, in a Danish context, a bourgeoning body of research
on race and racism has pointed to how logics shaped around the concept of race influence media
representations (Andreassen, 2005), non-governmental organizations’work (Christensen et al.,
2022), welfare work with refugees (Padovan-Özdemir and Øland, 2022), young adults from
ethnic and religious minoritized backgrounds (Khawaja, 2010), and educational arenas, such as
elementary schools and high schools (e.g., Skadegård and Jensen, 2018; Vertelyté, 2022; Yang,
2021). According to a recent report from The Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Danish
NGO, Children’s Rights (Børns Vilkår), more than half of racial-ethnic minoritized students in
2Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
Danish municipal lower secondary schools have experienced being discriminated against because
of their country of origin, religion, culture, or skin color. All racial-ethnic minoritized students par-
ticipating in the study referred to in the report, have witnessed discrimination against racial-ethnic
minoritized peers (Slot et al., 2024). Yet, research touching on issues of race and racism among
children in Danish early childhood education has remained scarce. Based on ethnographic observa-
tions from a Danish kindergarten, this article explores how skin color becomes a socially con-
structed site of power and access in children’s social processes of differentiation. Finally, the
analysis presented, is used to discuss the need for early childhood educators to engage in racial
matters.
Theoretical perspectives
In the field of childhood sociology, research has centered on processes of social interaction and
societal dynamics, focusing on how these influence children and childhood (James et al., 1998).
Childhood is understood as a socially constituted phenomenon representing its own social signifi-
cance rather than being a path to adulthood (James et al., 1998). Still, children draw on the adult
world around them as they create and negotiate their peer relations (Corsaro, 2018). In an anthropo-
logical study on young children’s social preferences, Gulløv (2021) has found that children’s
choices of playmates are patterned around the children’s social and cultural experiences in ways
that reinforce rather than overcome differences in backgrounds. Below, I present the theoretical per-
spectives supporting this article. Though the theoretical perspectives originate from outside the field
of childhood sociology, they can, I argue, enrich our analytical understanding of how skin color
becomes the locus for social differentiation in young children’s everyday kindergarten life.
When exploring children’s social processes of differentiation, I use the concept of differentiation
in line with Sara Ahmed (2000). Ahmed’s research lies within feminism, queer theory, critical race
theory, and postcolonial studies, through which she theorizes how bodies and worlds take shape
through power relations secured and challenged in everyday life. In Strange Encounters, Ahmed
(2000) links practices of social differentiation to bodies’registrations of familiarity and strangeness.
Though differentiation should be understood as dispersed and in constant movement rather than
tied to static categories, differentiation sticks to certain bodies recognizing them as out of place,
while other bodies maintain a position as bodies-at-home in the social space (Ahmed, 2000).
The notion of racialization is relevant when exploring skin color as a socially constructed site of
power and access. Racialization illuminates social processes through which, for example, pheno-
typical markers like skin color become a significant matter of differentiation in racial matters
(Vertelyté, 2022). Ahmed (2002) has argued that racialization is a process that takes place in
time and space, with race being an effect of this process, rather than its origin or cause.
To analytically grasp how some bodies are marked out as different through processes of racia-
lization, I turn to the notion of whiteness as the norm against which Bodies of Color are measured
and defined (Ahmed, 2007; Dyer, 1997). I draw on Ahmed’s (2007) understanding of whiteness “as
that which has been received, or become given, over time. Whiteness could be described as an
ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how
they ‘take up’space, and what they ‘can do’” (p. 150). This understanding makes it possible for
me to turn my analytical gaze to how the socially embodied impact of whiteness as the norm orien-
tates (Ahmed, 2006) the children’s bodies, allowing them to take up space differently. As an ana-
lytical perspective, whiteness is not limited to a matter of phenotype but refers to a position of
power, a way of thinking and doing (Führer, 2021; Garner, 2014) and, thus, becomes “a way
of formulating questions about social relations”(Garner, 2007: 3), for example, in relation
to children’s racialized interpretations and negotiations of skin color. In the case of skin color,
Klarsgaard 3
“racialization involves a process of investing skin colour with meaning”(Ahmed, 2002: 46, italics
in original). This meaning, I argue, does not take its form detached from the dominant understand-
ing of whiteness as the norm. Thus, the notion of whiteness is useful for understanding how some
bodies are marked out as different, as strangers.
Corsaro (2018) has found that children’s social relationships are embodied in everyday discur-
sive practices, in the talk that goes on in peer cultures and in the larger communities. I apply a
Michel Foucault–inspired understanding of discourse as being about both verbal and bodily
acted types of practices that must be thought of as mutually constituting (Søndergaard, 2005). In
this understanding, whiteness is expressed through discursively mediated verbal or bodily power-
relational negotiations of normalcy. Power is here understood not as a fixed phenomenon owned by
individuals or national states, but as contextual and productive in the sense that it “reaches into the
very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their
discourses, learning processes and everyday lives”(Foucault, 1980: 39). Though Foucault and
Ahmed do not write about children, their theorizations of embodied practices of power and
social differentiation are relevant to the field of childhood sociology. Young children are almost
constantly on the move. In everyday discursive practices, they are using objects, body movements,
gestures, and language when interacting and negotiating the presentation of their bodies (Corsaro,
2018; James, 2000).
Methodological considerations
This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, which, Allisson James (2001) has argued, enables
the study of children as competent interpreters of their world. Numerous ethnographic studies have
been conducted in Danish early childhood education settings, focusing on children’s everyday life
and its embeddedness in social relations (e.g., Gulløv, 1999, 2021; Palludan, 2005). The study on
which this article is based explicitly applies a critical ethnographic approach (Madison, 2020) when
investigating how power-relational negotiations of social differentiation are enacted in children’s
peer relations. The study’s specific, yet open, approach allowed me to concretize my analytical
focus on children’s social differentiations in an ongoing dialogue with the empirical material gen-
erated. This point is exemplified in the next section, “Following the glow of the empirical material.”
The fieldwork was conducted during the first four months of 2022 in a suburban kindergarten
with a relatively racial and ethnic diverse intake area. The 35 children enrolled primarily came
from middle-class families. About half the children did not have a white
3
Danish majoritized back-
ground. Most of these children had another white Nordic or Eastern European background and
spoke Danish fluently. The remaining children with a minoritized Danish background originated
from the Middle East, Asia, or Africa. These children’s Danish-language skills varied from
fluent to limited. Of the eight early childhood educators, two were Educators of Color and thus
had a minoritized Danish background.
Participant observation (Fangen, 2010) was used as the primary method in the field. Doing par-
ticipant observation allowed me to watch, listen to, and participate in the children’s locally situated
and constantly changing social practices, interactions, and power-relational negotiations. Critical
ethnography explicitly questions structures of inequity as they play out in everyday practices
(Madison, 2020). I followed an observation guide to focus on the children’s microsocial engage-
ments in processes of social differentiation.
The term microsocial refers to the local and situated face-to-face interactional engagements
between the children (Corsaro, 2018). Observing the children, I was interested in what they said
(or did not say) to each other and in their bodily expressions and choices of play relations. Such
a focus does not neglect how the macrostructures of historical, societal, and discursive experiences
4Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
play a role in children’s interactions. Rather, my microsocial focus gave insight into how these
macrostructures became effective in the children’s everyday life.
On average, I spent five hours in the kindergarten when conducting observations, allowing
myself enough time to dwell on the rhythm and atmosphere of the day. My participation shifted
from mostly observing to mostly participating, depending on the situation. I jotted notes in a note-
book (Emerson et al., 2011), which I elaborated on during shorter breaks away from the children
and the early childhood educators to minimize their feelings of being observed. I aimed to write
fieldnotes detailed enough to tune my analytical gaze on the often overlooked social and legitimized
practices that play out in the everyday processes of children’s social differentiations. My fieldnotes
comprise detailed descriptions of specific situations, including verbatim quotes and embodied
expressions.
I depended on the children as gate-keepers to their social practices. The term gate-keepers refers
to the people who are in a position to either convey or deny the researcher access to the field (Miller
and Bell, 2012). Understanding the children as competent interpreters of the social world, I took
their role as gate-keepers seriously. I therefore continuously (re)negotiated my access to the field
with them. As an example, I was sensitive to the children’s different ways of rejecting my presence
through direct speech, body language, or concrete actions, like turning their back to me or telling
me that I was not allowed to watch. Such actions were always respected, which allowed the children
time away from my observational gaze (see Spyrou, 2016, for similar considerations). When I first
met the children, I told them I was going to spend time in the kindergarten to learn about how chil-
dren play and who they are—or are not—friends with and why. The children did not question my
purpose, but some were eager to see my notebook and do some jotting themselves. In an ethical
attempt not to “fake friendship”(Duncombe and Jessop, 2012: 113) with the children, I positioned
myself as a “different kind of grown-up”explaining that my role differed from that of the early
childhood educators.
Following the glow of the empirical material
Reading through the empirical material, after having completed the participant observations, I
looked for situations where power-hierarchical negotiations of social differentiation seemed to
play out in everyday contexts of children’s kindergarten life. My initial labeling of the children’s
interactions was, first, about “social differentiation”; second, involved “negotiations,”and third,
reflected “power-hierarchical”structures. This labeling resembled the process of coding (see
Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019) in qualitative research, in the sense that the labels were meant
to reflect what they named. However, my way of working with the empirical material after the label-
ing moved my analytical approach beyond the qualitative notion of stable representation through
coding. Having completed the initial labeling, I entered a dialogue with the early childhood educa-
tors to discuss and challenge the preliminary analytical cuts I had made into some of the observa-
tions by labeling them “power-hierarchical negotiations of social differentiation.”The dialogue
with the early childhood educators moved my analysis forward.
Maggie MacLure writes about the “glow”(2010: 282) of data, describing how fragments of data
can glow in the sense that it invokes curiosity, (bodily) sensations, or situated responses. In the dia-
logue with the early childhood educators, one observation stood out—or glowed—as it got the most
unvarying responses from the early childhood educators. Their first response was seconds of
silence. Some looked to each other, others lowered their gaze. The observation—which was the
one referred to in the introduction—is presented in the next section. The early childhood educators
who first started talking expressed how deeply it affected them to listen to the observation.
Following MacLure’s (2010) trail of thought, the affective resonance experienced by the early
Klarsgaard 5
childhood educators suggested that what seemed at play in the observation was worth approaching
analytically. I, therefore, decided to stay with the observation, which sparked my analytical interest
in how skin color becomes a socially constructed site of power and access in children’s social pro-
cesses of differentiation.
When taking the stance that “the process of analysis is always interpretive, always contingent,
always a version or a reading from some theoretical, epistemological or ethical standpoint”
(Wetherell, 2001: 384), the analysis presented must be considered a situated construction
waiting to be explored, challenged, and expanded in future research. The analysis makes a signifi-
cant contribution to the Danish field of childhood sociology, where knowledge on how racial
matters, including normative whiteness, play a role in children’s everyday life, is limited, especially
in the context of early childhood education.
Analysis: Wonderings about skin color
I start this section by presenting field observations that offer an insight into Anders and his friend
Walther’s wonderings about dark-complexioned skin and how the two boys use their interpretations
to negotiate normalcy and access to the kindergarten’s social space. Then the observations are sub-
jected to an analytical discussion, drawing on the theoretical framework presented.
One day during the participant observations, I enter one of the kindergarten’s age-divided group
rooms. The children are all busy playing. Some play together; others play alone. Some are moving
around; others are sitting down. I squat down next to the grey sofa where Anders is sitting. He and I
start a conversation on everyday things. Yolanda comes to the sofa and Anders says, “Hi, chocolate
face.”Yolanda’s Danish skills are limited, and Anders does not wait for her to reply. While I
wonder if Anders did in fact call Yolanda “chocolate face,”Yolanda walks away. Anders turns
his head to me and says, “Alma is also chocolate face.”(Alma is a three-year-old Black girl
from the kindergarten.) “I think Yolanda and Alma are sisters,”Anders continues. “Why do you
think that?,”I ask. “Because Alma is also brown,”Anders replies.
A few minutes pass and Anders is still sitting on the sofa with Yolanda standing not far from
him. Anders tries to show Yolanda some of the play food laying on the sofa. Yolanda moves
closer. Anders points at her with a plastic carrot and says, “Hi, chocolate face, I shoot you.”
Next, Anders hands Yolanda the carrot and soon the two of them are moving around in circles
together with another white girl. The children are using plastic vegetables to shoot at each other.
They smile and laugh. Yolanda—who is the one getting shot at the most—falls silent and
lowers her head. She lets out a small grunt and withdraws from the interaction when the other
girl comes too close to her with a corn gun. Two early childhood educators, one white and one
of Color, who have been in the group room the whole time without interfering, call all the children
together and ask them to sit down on the floor in a circle. An adult-led activity is about to begin.
The following day, it is one of the first sunny days of spring and all the children are playing
freely in the playground. Anders and his friend Walther (who is also five years old and white)
ride together on a blue tricycle tandem bike. In front of them, Yolanda rides on a red tricycle.
The three kids ride in circles around a large, blue-painted bike shed. Anders and Walther bump
their bike into the back of Yolanda’s bike while laughing. Anders says, “Chocolate face, drive
on, chocolate face. Go away, chocolate face.”Yolanda turns around, looks at the boys and then
continues to ride around the bike shed.
After lunch, all the children are back in the playground. Anders and Walther are standing
together up against a brick wall. They are fidgeting with something, but I cannot see what.
Meanwhile, Yolanda rides the red tricycle around the bike shed as she did earlier. Anders and
Walther are now walking across the lawn while asking themselves, “Where is chocolate face?
6Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
There she is.”The two boys spot Yolanda, who is still riding the bike. They run toward her saying,
“Yolanda, we have a present for you,”and then they throw leaves at her. Walther places a small pile
of leaves on the back of Yolanda’s bike. Yolanda says, “No”and gets off the bike to remove the
leaves. At the same time, Anders tries to get on the bike. In a loud voice, Yolanda says, “No! It is me
riding the bike.”Anders gets off the bike, and Yolanda gets back on and resumes her driving
around. Anders and Walther get on the blue tandem tricycle they used earlier and follow
Yolanda. Walther shouts, “Yolanda, I have a present for you. We have a present for you.”The
boys bump into the back of Yolanda’s bike. Yolanda turns around, looks at the boys, and lets
out a small grunt in a squeaky voice.
A white early childhood educator approaches the three children, asking Anders and Walther if
they are teasing Yolanda. “Yes,”Walther replies. The early childhood educator tells the boys not to
tease and then leaves. A few minutes later, Anders and Walther have each climbed up into one of
the hammocks, which are hung up on the playground. In another hammock, Nour (a five-year-old
girl of Arabic ancestry) is sitting. Anders and Walther are chatting. Anders says, “It would be silly if
everyone had brown skin.”Walther replies, “Then everyone would be Yolanda, everyone would be
chocolate face.”The boys start to talk about Nour: “She is a baby. She is chocolate face.”The boys
ignore Nour’s protests. Yolanda, who is still riding the tricycle, rides past the boys. She gets off the
bike and walks toward the hammock where Anders is sitting. Anders stretches his arm out toward
Yolanda and says, “You can’t come here; your skin is brown.”
Constructing and expelling the racialized Other
In childhood sociology, it is a prevalent understanding that children draw on their experiences and cul-
tural scripts as they respond actively to their surroundings (Corsaro, 2018; Gulløv, 2021; James and
Prout, 1990). In the observations presented above, Anders and Walther’s interpretations of the dark
complexion of Yolanda’s skin can be understood as wonderings—wonderings informed by the norma-
tive whiteness dominating Danish society (cf. Skadegård, 2018). Dominant understanding of race—in
this case, whiteness—influences young children through media, educational environments, family
members, peers, or through everyday social observations (Quintana and McKown, 2008). Thus,
normative whiteness constitutes the framework offered to Anders and Walther through which they inter-
pret and mediate their understanding of skin color. The first thing I hear Anders say to Yolanda is, “Hi,
chocolate face.”Using the term ‘chocolate face’as a reference to the brown color of Yolanda’sskin
underlines the difference Anders has observed between the color of his own skin and Yolanda’s skin.
The fact that Anders refers to the natural and obvious difference between Yolanda’s dark skin
and his own fair skin is not the issue per se. Focusing on differences in outward appearances is
natural for young children and skin color is a phenotypical marker they are likely to comment
on (Corsaro and Fingerson, 2006; Van Ausdale and Feagin, 2001). The issue at hand, I argue, is
that Yolanda’s body is Othered and marked by its difference from Anders’body (also see
Ahmed, 2006) through the dehumanizing term ‘chocolate face,’which reduces Yolanda to some-
what less than human. Correspondingly, Black scholars, such as Audre Lorde (1984) and Frantz
Fanon (1952/2021), have shared lived experiences of how brown bodies are sexualized, met as dan-
gerous or angry—reduced to what Ahmed theorizes as “to be ‘not’.”Ahmed writes, “if to be human
is to be white, then to be not white is to inhabit the negative: it is to be ‘not’” (p. 161). Similarly, the
research of Van Ausdale and Feagin (2001) has given examples of how white children attribute
characteristics such as ‘untrustworthy’and ‘stinky’to Black peers and how children pick up on
a teacher’s idea of associating origin and bodily markers with food.
By pointing to the perceived affinity between Yolanda and Alma, the other brown-skinned girl,
Anders reaches the conclusion that the girls are sisters. This conclusion brings Anders an immediate
Klarsgaard 7
supposed knowledge, which he needs to make meaning of the social world to which he has had
limited access (cf. James, 1993). Social divisions are part of children’s interpretive reproduction
(Gulløv, 2021). Children create social distinctions and organize social groups, identify with
some, and distinguish themselves from others by drawing on what they already know about cultural
distinctions and social categories and with the use of verbal debates and arguments (Corsaro, 2018;
Gulløv, 2021). Thus, Anders’s conclusion that Yolanda and Alma are sisters, based on the color of
their skin, can also be understood as a racialized differentiation used to make meaning of his won-
dering about skin colors.
The observations can be read as examples of how normative whiteness orientates Anders’sinter-
pretation of skin color. Normative whiteness spurs him to draw a parallel between chocolate and
the brown color of Yolanda’s skin and to organize social grouping based on skin color.
Furthermore, normative whiteness allows Anders to take up a position of power in the social world
of the kindergarten. From his position of power, Anders is in control of the interaction that follows
where he tries to get Yolanda’s attention to show her the play food laying on the sofa. It looks like
a friendly invitation to playful interaction. However, the dehumanizing greeting “Hi, chocolate
face”is repeated and Yolanda is being shot at with a carrot. At one point, it looks like Yolanda is
having fun moving in circles together with Anders and the other girl all shooting at each other.
Yolanda smiles and laughs. After having been shot at the most, Yolanda’s body turns still and she
lets out a grunt, presumably signaling that the shooting has become too much. Yolanda withdraws
from the interaction, leaving Anders’s position of power unchallenged.
The next day, differentiation seemingly still sticks to Yolanda’s body. She is passed up on the
playground by Anders and his friend Walther, who, like the day before, do not explicitly notice
Yolanda’s gender or age as young children often do (Corsaro, 2018; Gulløv, 1999). Instead, the
boys seem orientated by whiteness, which affects how they “take up [playground] space”
(Ahmed, 2000: 150). Anders and Walther cite normative whiteness as they bump their bike into
the back of Yolanda’s bike while saying, “Chocolate face, drive on, chocolate face. Go away, choc-
olate face.”They explicitly search for “chocolate face”as they move across the lawn, promising
Yolanda a present while throwing leaves at her and on her bike. Repeatedly and intentionally
bumping their bike into the back of Yolanda’s bike, forcing her to move forward, can be understood
as an action emphasizing the dehumanizing and racialized othering inherent in the term ‘chocolate
face.’
The position of power in which the boys place themselves in relation to Yolanda is chal-
lenged twice: first, when Anders tries to sit on Yolanda’s bike. In a loud voice, Yolanda
says, “No! It is me riding the bike,”which causes Anders to get off the bike. However,
Anders is soon back in control of the interaction as he and Walther call to Yolanda from
their tandem tricycle, offering her a “present”while bumping into her bike. The second time
the boys’powerful position is challenged is when an early childhood educator tells the boys
not to tease. Though this interruption briefly disrupts the interaction between the
three children, it does not bring into question the boys’citing of normative whiteness and
does not prevent further exclusion of Yolanda.
Anders and Walther are now sitting in the hammocks, chatting. According to Corsaro (2018),
young children debate things that are important to them, for example, friendship and play activities.
In this process, children influence, negotiate, and comprehend norms and their own positions
(James and Prout, 1990), as they develop a shared sense of control over their social world
(Corsaro, 2018). Chatting with each other, Anders and Walther agree that “It would be silly if
everyone had brown skin”and, thus, comprehend and negotiate dark-complexioned skin as a sig-
nificant marker of difference. In their conversation, the boys appear to (re)incorporate normative
whiteness as they build up a shared understanding of their social world—which, if all brown,
8Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
would be silly. “Then everyone would be Yolanda, everyone would be chocolate face,”Walther
says.
Yolanda’s brown body thus becomes a site of racialization (Ahmed, 2002; Vertelyté, 2022) sub-
jected to the boy’s wonderings and interpretations of dark-complexioned skin in relation to their
known social world. Marking out Yolanda as different allows the boys to build up a sense of
belonging (James, 1993) and strengthen their interpersonal alliance (Corsaro, 2018). They use
their registered ‘familiarity’(i.e., whiteness) to align themselves with each other, taking up a pos-
ition as bodies-at-home, while the ‘strangeness’of brown skin is used to mark out the Other peer
(Ahmed, 2000). Anders and Walther also call Nour (whose skin tone is light golden brown) “choc-
olate face,”using the term alongside “baby,”which—in my observations—I have found to be a
term often used by young children in social relations to oppress and exclude each other in order
to maintain a more privileged position themselves. From his privileged position as a body-at-home,
Anders occupies the social space and determines its formation as he points out Yolanda’s brown
body as unsuitable to inhabit the space. Ahmed (2007) writes, “For bodies that are not extended
by the [white] skin of the social, bodily movement is not so easy. Such bodies are stopped”
(p. 161). Correspondingly, Anders says to Yolanda, “You can’t come here; your skin is brown.”
Also, Anders stretches his arm out toward Yolanda to emphasize the stopping. Defending their
play space is an essential routine in young children’s social behavior in everyday institutional
life (Corsaro, 1985). However, the racialized othering and expulsion of Yolanda correspond with
findings from international research on race and racism within early childhood education, where
similar behaviors have been observed among children (e.g., Patterson and Bigler, 2006; Van
Ausdale and Feagin, 2001). In the following section, I argue that the boys’wonderings about
skin color and their resulting refusal to share social space with Yolanda should not be considered
an innocent everyday part of kindergarten life.
Not so innocent
As children create and negotiate their peer relations, they distance themselves from some peers and
not others in ways that are found to reinforce rather than overcome differences in social and cultural
backgrounds (Gulløv, 2021). Anders and Walther’s refusal to share social space with Yolanda is
justified by the brown color of Yolanda’s skin, which they recognize as different from their own
fair skin. The analysis shows how the boys’wonderings about and interpretations of dark-
complexioned skin are more complex than to be considered an innocent everyday part of children’s
kindergarten life. Anders and Walther’s racializing wonderings become spatially organizing.
Yolanda is expelled from social proximity to the boys’white bodies. Anders and Walther’s
bodily gestures work to socially erase Yolanda, as she is reduced to food (chocolate), she is
being shot at, and she is recognized as (a) strange(r) because of her brown skin. Of course,
Yolanda is not a stranger to the boys, per se. As Ahmed (2000) writes, “Strangers are not
simply those who are not known …but those who are, in their very proximity, already recognised
as not belonging, as being out of place”(p. 21, italics in original). Thus, the boys’perceived ‘stran-
ge(r)ness’about Yolanda is justified in their recognition of her brown body as silly and out of place.
The fact that Anders and Walther notice the arrival of Yolanda’s body and center stage its dark com-
plexion says little about Yolanda but a lot about the normative whiteness that is already there
(Ahmed, 2007). Hence, the racializing wonderings of Anders and Walther are not theirs alone
but are embedded in the normative whiteness found to dominate the children’s social world (i.e.,
the kindergarten as an institution of contemporary Danish society (Klarsgaard, 2024; Skadegård,
2018).
Klarsgaard 9
Whiteness orientates the boys’wonderings about skin color and organizes their microsocial
verbal and bodily gestures toward Yolanda. Though Anders and Walther’s racializing wonderings
and consequent bodily and verbal gestures seemingly disappear as soon as they appear, these won-
derings are not inherently innocent. The analysis shows how the boys’racialized wonderings take
place as ongoing and negotiated processes of embodied power relations and positionings “affecting
those bodies that are subject to its address”(Ahmed, 2007: 161; also see Stenum, 2017). Thus, the
boys’citing of whiteness, expressed through their racializing wonderings, upholds white normativ-
ity and reproduces macrosocial structures of power and dominance related to race and racial
inequity.
Discussion: The need for early childhood educators to engage in
racial matters
Young children are not simply internalizing the (adult) world around them and its norms, but are
actively contributing to its production, reproduction, and change. James and Prout (1990) have
pointed out that young children play a key role in both societal continuity and change. However,
children in kindergarten have relatively limited social experience and only some general principles
of social interaction with which to regulate their interactions (Gulløv, 1999). Therefore, early child-
hood educators must support children’s ability to contribute to societal change when it comes to
issues of racial inequity, which, if left unchallenged, will be reproduced continually.
Though the early childhood educators are nearby in the observations presented, they do not
comment on or challenge Anders and Walther’s interpretations of dark-complexioned skin.
Maybe they do not hear what the boys are saying, or maybe they neglect the extent of what is
going on. The belief that children are ‘colorblind’leads many early childhood educators and tea-
chers to neglect issues of race and racism (Husband, 2012; Van Ausdale and Feagin, 2001). A
study of the curriculum for the Danish bachelor’s degree program in social education conducted
by the Danish Institute for Human Rights shows that issues of race and racism are not a mandatory
part of the program (Strandby et al., 2016). Consequently, future early childhood educators receive
little to no training in critically addressing, for example, processes of race-related social differenti-
ation. As a result, the belief that race and skin color do not matter in children’s social interactions
remains unchallenged. Correspondingly, early childhood educators are found to operate in a tour-
istic manner, celebrating diversity without taking the risk of engaging with everyday practices of
power and normalization, arguing that children are too young to learn about race (Husband,
2012; Robinson and Díaz, 2005). This leaves children with a poor preparation for dealing with
and challenging racism and racial inequities (Boutte et al., 2011). Van Ausdale and Feagin
(2001) have emphasized that most Adults (i.e., educators, scholars, and parents) of Color are
aware that young Children of Color must deal with racial matters, whereas, many white adults
believe that young children cannot express racist attitudes and actions, as they are too young to
have such discriminatory intentions. While Anders and Walther admit to teasing Yolanda on the
playground, their intentions are unknown. However, the question of intent or not is of less import-
ance, I argue, as the analysis shows how Anders and Walther’s wonderings about skin color have an
oppressive effect with bodily and social impact. Consequently, there is a need for early childhood
educators to actively engage in challenging and disrupting the different ways in which racialized
othering and normative whiteness is enacted in children’s peer relations. As argued by Oona
Fontanella-Nothom (2019), taking the time to critically engage in dialogue or other creative activ-
ities around race and racism with young children can work against structures of racism.
10 Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
Notably, the early childhood educators did react and engage when I read aloud to them the obser-
vation of Anders saying to Yolanda, “You can’t come here; your skin is brown.”(See the methodo-
logical section.) When the few seconds of silence had passed and the early childhood educators had
expressed how deeply it affected them to listen to the observation, they started conversing. Had they
themselves observed similar incidents in the kindergarten and how could they prevent such inci-
dents from happening in the future? The early childhood educators’responses to the observation
read aloud combined with the fact that they did not react as the observation played out, suggest
that, on the one hand, they find it important to prevent issues of racism from taking place, but
on the other hand, they are not attuned to the necessity of challenging normative whiteness in every-
day kindergarten life. As early childhood educators do not exist detached from broader macrostruc-
tures of white normativity and racial inequity, I conclude by calling for more research from a
Danish context on how whiteness influences early childhood educators’everyday pedagogical
practices and responses to social processes of racialized othering, including young white children’s
not-so-innocent wonderings about skin color.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the journal’s editors and the anonymous reviewers for their time and comments.
The published version of this article has benefitted from both.
Data availability statement
Full access to data will not be publicly shared as data are person-sensitive. In accordance with the guidelines of
Oslo Metropolitan University, data are stored in TSD-Services for sensitive data (project code p1754).
Declaration of conflicting interest
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.
Ethical approval and informed consent statements
The research was conducted in accordance with the Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the
Norwegian Guidelines for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The research was
approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (reference number 724940) on June 6, 2021.All parti-
cipants or their legal guardians provided written informed consent prior to participating. All participants or
their legal guardians provided written informed consent for publication. Pseudonyms are used in the article
when referring to participants. No institutional name or location is mentioned.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Nadia Norling Tshili Klarsgaard https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2276-2850
Notes
1. Pseudonyms are used to name the children mentioned.
2. In line with Bell et al. (2016), I recognize the problematic ableist language of the term, but reference it as
used by other scholars to describe a social phenomenon.
Klarsgaard 11
3. The “w”in white is intentionally not capitalized to draw attention to the undeserved power privileges given
to people with a white Danish majoritized background (cf. Fontanella-Nothom, 2019).
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Author biography
Nadia Norling Tshili Klarsgaard is a PhD candidate at the Department of Early Childhood
Education, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, and an associate lecturer in the bachelor’s
program in social education at the University College of Northern Denmark. Her research interests
revolve around issues of diversity and inequity, exploring how social practices related to dominant
understandings of normalcy and deviation impact children’s everyday lives in the context of
education.
14 Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 0(0)
