That’s interesting. I didn’t know Crayola made such a thing. I don’t see them as offensive, but I wonder what purpose they’re intended to serve given that there are already plenty of colors in a Crayon set without specifically making a separate set for skin tones. Maybe teachers could use it to help encourage the acceptance and value of diversity. I don’t know.
I can’t remember for sure, but I seem to recall from when I was a little kid that there was a pinkish-tan Crayola crayon labeled as “Flesh,” which in today’s world would definitely be offensive (and should have been then — especially to non-pinkish people).
I think the Crayola multi-cultural crayons are trying to address an issue people have brought up before pertaining to not having enough shades to color in human characters. In the smaller crayon packs, it used to be limited. Obviously this small box is just marketing at this point since the larger collections have many more shades.
As far as the “offensive” ones, this seems more like a gag gift that anything I’d actually give to someone. I guess if you were gifting an adult coloring book, this could bring a laugh, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find these.
I like the idea of many skin tones, but it should be called that. Not multicultural. Culture has nothing to do with skin color. It suggests that if you have a certain skin color you automatically categorised to be a representative of a certain culture. That’s not a good message. Skin color should not be used to box people in. It’s just an irrelevant feature like hair or eye color, or more broadly pitch of voice or strength of a handshake.
So, in summary it should’ve been called: Skin Tone Collection, like they do it in cosmetics and fashion. Nobody calls their product ‘Multicultural Foundations’.
Yes, that’s a very good point. Skin color shouldn’t be associated with culture — they’re very different things. It also bothers me a bit that the crayon assortment is tied into what has become politically charged language.
There’s should be enough colors in a crayon box to color what kids typically draw. Kids tend to draw people, so provide the colors appropriate for doing that without drawing attention to and making an issue out of something that should be as natural and neutral as a person’s hair or eye color.
I’m assuming Crayola’s intentions are good, but drawing attention to skin color as an issue worthy of special crayons seems somehow wrong and inadvertently suggesting to children that skin color does matter enough that we have special crayons in a special box to address it.
Here is a fun little story from when my child was in 1st grade…He came home all upset that he had colored the bird wrong. It was a coloring page of a cardinal and he colored it beautifully staying in the lines but he used blue. When I asked why he colored the bird blue when it was a cardinal he said. “Papa the cardinal in our yard is blue” I thought to my self we don’t have any cardinals frequenting our yard. Then it dawned on me that figure resembles a Blue Jay as much as a cardinal.
That was a little off track but any reason to talk up my kid LOL…and Maybe we should just let kids color without labels on the crayons… we might just learn something from them.
I love that story! Farther off track still, the literal nature of a child’s eye and the processing of what it sees are surely to be cherished. One day my young son (I don’t remember his exact age, but he had been reading long enough to recognize most 3-4 letter words), and I were in the car and he inquisitively asked, “Dad, why are you just driving right past all these signs that say DO NOT PASS? Won’t we get in trouble for that?”
It’s all presets in the belly of the forum set up. It could be ten years from now and if it finally gets enough clicks, reads, shares, comments … that’s when an award would be given.
I still get them for every now and then once that 500th person clicks a link I posted when we opened lol