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By JenĂ©e Desmond-Harris | Originally Published at The Root. February 26 2014 1:00 AM

Race Manners: My white preschooler thinks she should do what “kids that are the same color” do at lunch. Help!

“My 3-year-old daughter attends preschool at a public charter in Washington, D.C. The school draws students citywide through a lottery system and is very diverse (a black plurality, with significant Latino and Asian populations). In her classroom of 18, she is one of four white children.
“We opt to pay for the school-provided lunch, for three reasons: 1) Making a lunch every day doesn’t fit our family schedule, 2) It’s cost-effective even when paying full freight at $3 a day and 3) Most of the children at the school eat the school lunch—some because it is subsidized or free based on income qualifications—and we like the social values of a ‘You eat what everyone else is eating’ approach. Yesterday she asked me if she could start bringing her lunch from home. When I asked why, first she said, ‘School lunch is boring’ and then said, ‘Because all of the other kids that are the same color as me [white] bring their lunch.’
“We’re standing firm on using school lunches, but I feel like I’m missing a teachable 



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