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| Image: Victor Habbick |
however, when i started high school, my dad retired and our family settled in the dallas/fort worth area. my younger sister was in fourth grade. i remember her coming home from school one day and telling my parents that a clique of caucasian girls told her she "would be cool if she was only the right color. how old are you in fourth grade? 10 at the most. it was sad. any form of racism is sad. and sadly, many children learn it at home then bring it to school, where the disease festers.
(subsequently, when i started to drive and made a rookie driving mistake, a red neck leaned out of his truck window and called me nigger. i think he had a gun rack in the back, but i might be dramatizing a bit. it was the first time the word had been spewed at me.)
fast forward to 2012. the more things change; the more they stay the same. i was spending some time with my five year old niece (yes, five) and she began to tell me about her day at pre-school. she mentioned that one of the boys at school is not very nice. then a few moments later she asks me, "melyssa, what does mexican mean anyway?" after posing some careful questions, i realized that her classmate had been calling people out based on color. because my niece's birthday falls in november, she is older than most of her classmates. most of the other children are four. it's sad to think this is what they are talking about at four and five years old.
so, anyway, i explained to her that people who are from mexico are called mexicans. i explained further, "your heritage is from africa and their heritage is from mexico." and she just looked at me with those innocent brown eyes and said, "well, i thought i was from texas?" to which i replied, "you are."
and you know, that should be enough. it should be enough at 55, 35 and most certainly at five in pre-k.
2 lovely comments:
Kara Roberson said...
Melyssa, I was around 4 or 5 years old the first time I heard the word "colored". I was playing with my friend in her backyard when her mother came out and announced that there was a "colored man" at the side gate and we should be careful. Colored - wow, what color was he I wondered. Purple, green, blue, orange.... Was he more than one color? She said "colored" as in plural. I secretly hoped he was purple. That would be cool. I couldn't hold back my curiosity. I had to see what color or colors he was. When I rounded the corner, I was extremely disappointed. He looked no different from any other man I had ever seen.
That night I asked my mom why my friend's mother would call the man I saw colored. I had never heard that word used on a person before and the reality was confusing to me. She explained to me that originally all men and women spoke the same language and had the same skin tone. These people wanted to be closer to God and decided to build a tower so that they could reach Heaven. God was unhappy with what they were doing and so He confused them by making them speak different languages and look different. That, she explained was why some people had brown skin, white skin, yellow skin etc. She explained that some people use terms like "colored" or other inappropriate words for people that look different from themselves but that we don't do that.
We may not have overcome racism yet, but I hope that every time that someone acts ignorantly or treats someone else poorly because they are different that someone like my mom is there to educate them and throw in a Bible lesson to boot!
melyssa said...
i hope so too, kara. we've come far but still have far to go. thanks for reading!