"Hello, Mango Baby!"

[aliki]

How would you respond if you were at a school-sponsored social event, and a 5-year old stops eating his spaghetti, looks up, waves enthusiastically, and repeats over and over: "HELLO, MANGO BABY!" at your half-Asian child?

Brian says it's not a derogatory slang or racist remark at all, and a quick Google search seems to agree with him.

Initially, I thought perhaps I misheard him and it was something nonsensical that children say, but judging by the reactions of the parents-- who turned bright red and kept saying "STOP SAYING THAT!" while hitting his hand-- perhaps not. They looked like they wanted to crawl under the table and hide for the rest of the night, which only provoked the child to keep repeating it while waving at Erika, repeating the phrase louder and louder to hysterical decibels.

He didn't say it to any other children the entire night. Just Erika. She has brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin, and was wearing a pink hoodie sweatshirt with the word "LOVE" on the chest, and dark brown pants with white sneakers. She was eating cubes of cheese and spaghetti. There was no mango involved.

Thoughts?

Mango because of her skin color? Because Asian people at Mango? Because Mango is the new word he learnt but he's only going to use it when referring to Erika and no other children at the dinner?

I asked the child "what does that mean?" and the parents just got more embarrassed and started covering his mouth with their hand, so I just moved to a different table. (I wasn't seated at their table, but someone at their table had waved me over and when I arrived, said "I just wanted to see the baby!".. which then started all the "MANGO BABY" comments).

Comments

[-evalution.livejournal.com]

my guess is it's just a five year old kid thing, but i'd be kind of put off by it, i think. my daughter is almost 5 and jokes are the best thing ever, as are nonsense teasing nicknames, so maybe it's just that? the parents reaction is kind of weird, imo.