My 4-year-old is saying racist things at school

My daughter is 4 years old and is white. There is one child of color in her preschool class, and he is Black. According to the teachers, she and this child play a lot, and they are both strong-willed. They reportedly get into daily arguments during playtime (e.g. "let's pretend we are puppies!" "no, let's be ninjas!"). Normal childhood stuff.HOWEVER, when my daughter gets angry during these disputes, she has reportedly on three separate occasions told the other child that she doesn't want to play with him anymore because he "has brown skin" or "dark skin."Obviously we are horrified about this. We have met with the teachers. Their only reaction so far has been reprimanding our daughter immediately following each incident. They have been "trying to keep the two children separate" during the school day. We have tried several different approaches while talking to our daughter at home. We have tried stressing the importance of inclusion and kindness, and we have tried fostering empathy by describing how much it hurts people to exclude them based on their skin color. These approaches are not working, apparently.My hunch is that she gets a big reaction from everyone by uttering this insult, so she is repeating the behavior because it gets her attention. I'm worried that continuing to reprimand her about this particular insult will actually perpetuate it. But obviously we can't just let it continue without consequences. What would you do?We met with her teachers again yesterday, and they are completely flabbergasted about how to approach this issue in the classroom. One of the teachers said that in15 years of teaching, he has NEVER encountered racism in the classroom before. They are talking about sending our daughter home from school if it happens again. I'm afraid that is not a productive approach. What do you think? We think the teachers should probably do something bigger to address racism in the classroom, but they are afraid of singling the other child out since he is the only Black child in the class. What do you think?Please help if you have any suggestions or resources for 1) us as parents and 2) the teachers. I know there must be better ways to handle these issues, but I am at a loss. And this feels like a critical moment to stop this behavior.PS: For what it's worth, we also had a positive meeting with the parents of the other child (at their request) to open lines of communication. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2CXZxJJ