A dad has shared the heartbreaking moment he found his five-year-old son 'trying to scrub his black skin off'.
The boy, from Cambridgeshire, apparently took the desperate action after a girl in his class refused to invite him to her birthday party because of he was black.
Dad Isaac - not his real name - sat his boy down to have a discussion about race after the incident, which happened around a year ago.
The youngster had also tried rubbing dandelions on his arm in the hope of making his skin white, Cambridgeshire Live reports.
The father said: “I had to talk with my five-year-old son about race a year ago. I came up into the bathroom and found him in the shower, scrubbing himself really hard with a towel.
“My wife and I asked what he was doing and his response still upsets me now. He said, ‘a girl in my class didn’t invite me to her birthday party because of my skin colour.’ He was trying to scrub his black skin off.”
He said that prior to this incident his wife had found him in the garden rubbing dandelions on his arm. "He said ‘a boy in my class said if you rub dandelions on your skin you will become white’.
“The two incidents left my wife and I quite angry but we had to keep cool and think of the mental impact this will have on our little boy and his confidence moving forward.”
Isaac said he and his wife told his son he was loved and it did not matter what colour skin he had.
The pair started showing their boy the different colours of people he knows to convince him everyone is unique.
The father added: "There will be other parties to go to, but I got the sense he particularly liked this girl.
“I thought as a dad I was shielding him from (racism) until the time was right to sit down and explain it to him. Someone took that opportunity away from me. I was upset.
"In my wonderful world I had dreamed for him, he wouldn’t have been dealing with this at his age.
"In a way, I’m glad it’s happened to him then, because I’ve seen it hasn’t affected him. He hasn’t processed it in the way adults do.”
Isaac said he chose to 'blank out' the girl's name and instead tried to empower his son so any further incidents would not affect his confidence.
He added: "To me, the girl is irrelevant. It’s how my son deals with it that’s relevant, his emotional and physical wellbeing.”
Another Cambridgeshire child asked her dad if 'no one liked her anymore' after seeing white groups clashing with black protesters on the TV at a demonstration in London on June 13.
Her dad, James, told Cambridgeshire Live about his daughter's comment: “(Adults) need to be careful with our emotions and how we manage this stuff.
"The bottom line is the children are going to suffer most and they are our future.”
Those who attended the Black Lives Matter socially-distanced protest on Christ’s Pieces (in Cambridge) on June 6 will have heard Munya Jiri’s story of growing up in the area.
The 23-year-old said: “From about the age of seven, was the first time I started facing almost direct racism.
"I hit secondary school and words like ******, c***, monkey, slave, were said to my face daily.
"When you have these things said to your face daily, it destroys you, brings you down. You start looking in the mirror and saying 'God, why do I look like this?'.
"I used to go on the internet, I used to go on Incognito, delete my search history so I could Google things like 'how to bleach my skin' so I could be lighter.
"I thought 'oh, I'll go to school looking lighter, everyone will like me more.'
"I was looking at ways that I could straighten my hair, all these things that young black boys and girls are going through."
He said secondary school is a time when people build their image of themselves, however for most black people it is when they learn they will always be second.
Mr Jiri added: "We will never be seen as equals and we'll always be the ones to be thrown underneath the bus."
