Now that the warmer months are upon us, my sister and I have taken to keeping the boys out of doors as often as is possible. Both of the boys have discovered, as most children do, a passion for being out of doors this year.
And with that love of the outdoors, they've also rediscovered the many, many children that live in our apartment complex. Children are, to say the very least, very interesting creatures. They're so carefree and yet so worried. So naive and yet so wise.
Progress, as SaintAntioch recently wrote in one of his blogs, is playing in a sandbox. Nowhere is the potential for progress more evident than when a group of children, heedless of (or perhaps indifferent to) their differences, band together to play, to solve a problem or to simply enjoy one another.
And so begins this particular story.
A week and a half ago, while outside playing, Kaia met one of our neighbor's children. He's six and he's bigger than Kaia, talks much more clearly than Kaia, and has concerns outside the understanding of a three year old. But, they don't care about any of that. They have fun racing around the sidewalks on tricycles and plastic motorcycles, kicking a soccer ball as far as they can and surprisingly, sharing tales of their little brothers.
Kaia is a pale little boy with shining hazel eyes and a mischievous grin always at the ready. Tyler is African American and has that serious glint to his eyes that speaks of wisdom far beyond his six years. Kaia is working on pre-school from home this year; Tyler will be repeating kindergarten next year. But, none of that really matters to them.
After their first meeting, Tyler looked at my sister musingly and said, "You know, I've never had a white friend before."
Kaia broke in at that moment. "I'm peach, you're black and bay-bay sissy is brown," he told Tyler as if it were of absolutely no concern to him. "Come play ball with me?"
Tyler smiled, shrugged, and off they raced, leaving my sister behind shaking her head in amusement. She wasn't sure at that moment if Tyler would be back, but the lure of that friend and shared boyhood interests seemed to cinch the deal.
Every day when school lets out, Tyler comes racing across the complex to knock on the door. "Can Kaia come out and play?" he asks. The answer, when Kaia is home, is always yes. They like to play together and so they do, not caring that they are so very different not only in looks, but in age, in size, and in so many other respects.
As innocent as that little interaction was, it was important to us, nonetheless. Kaia's newborn sister is mixed. Before Aybra was born, he never noticed that anyone was any different. In fact, he thought that since we all had eyes, we were all the same. But, seeing that Aybra is darker than he is and hearing the discussions of some of my idiotic family members, he's realized that people have different colored skin and he’s worried over it to some extent.
He approached me one day and asked what color my skin was. I blinked in surprise at the question, but answered him. He then went on to ask what color skin he and his brother had and then about Aybra. I answered him as simply as possible while still trying to convey the lesson that, in the end, it didn't really matter who had what color skin. He finally nodded and walked off, looking far less uncertain than he had when he first approached.
I thought the discussion was finished. But, the next evening he and my husband decided to go exploring around the apartment complex. Half an hour later my husband, red-faced and flustered, ushered Kaia back inside the house.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"You will not believe it!" He fumed.
I waited patiently for him to explain. Apparently as he and Kaia were trooping up the sidewalk, one of the women that lives on the third story and her two daughters walked by. They're African American. Kaia stopped right in front of them, pointed right at the woman and said "Tell me about them black people."
My husband was mortified, but had no chance to explain. She assumed, perhaps, the worst and stormed off with her children in tow, huffing about how rude people allow their children to be. He and Kaia exited immediately in the other direction, with my husband beet red and sputtering.
Kaia, you see, didn't ask because he was being rude or because he wasn't taught his manners. Kaia asked because, for the first time in his existence, he'd come to realize that we have different colored skin and was, in his toddler way, trying to meld that new piece of information into the views he has always had of the world. He was trying to figure out where exactly it fit and if it really made a difference. His question was innocent enough, but to that woman, it was rude and perhaps even coming from racist teachings.
When Tyler brought up the same line of conversation though, Kaia's response was beautiful. He had found where those differences fit into his life and the role they play. It doesn't matter to him. People are still people. And a new friend is still a new friend. Tyler seems content with that answer too. In the week since that initial interaction, I've seen him surrounded by a sea of pale haired little beauties just as often as Kaia has raced around in a sea of laughing colors.
None of these children care that they are different. To them, they aren't different. They're simply children.
It’s made me think that perhaps the progress we need isn't in reaching for something different, in something new, but is in the thing we lost long ago... the ability to observe differences and realize that, in the end, they don't really matter. It's that simplicity that I adore and in many respects, wish the rest of us had been able to hold on too. How much good would we have been able to do had we simply decided that the things that tear us apart are, in reality, the things that just don't matter?
I don’t have that answer, but I sincerely hope that Kaia, Tyler and all of their new friends are able to grow without leaving behind that simplicity that makes the problems we face today seem so ridiculous. They may be children, but they have much to teach us. And it’s just too bad that so many of us are still so unwilling to learn because we, in all our wisdom, have it all figured out while they haven’t even yet begun.
There is, despite our denial, something important in those beginnings. It saddens me that we’ve forgotten that and will, through that ignorance; pass that same lesson on to so many of those same children and turn them into replica’s of ourselves instead of allowing them to hang on to the childhood reminder that we’re all the same.
We could all use that reminder. We've forgotten it far too often, allowed it to do far too much damage and have do so for far too long.
It reminds me of a story my mom tells about my little sister in kindergarten, and how she was always telling my mom about a friend of hers; she'd come home from school and say "today Rodger did this," or "Rodger said this today mom..."
Never once did she mention that Rodger was Black...because to her, that wasn't what defined Rodger...his funny stories and clowning nature defined him for my sister. My mom says she was surprised when she finally met Rodger; she realized that an adult probably would have mentioned Rodger's race at some point in the months of telling stories about him, but to my six year old sister, this wasn't a topic of conversation. Mom says she knew then that she was doing a good job raising unbiased children..she was proud that her daughter didn't even think to mention Rodger's race.
I wonder sometimes at the importance people put on race/color/etc. I wonder if we never learned from the dominate culture that there was some reason to start noticing/mentioning these things when talking about people or whatever, if we would continue to have the innocence of a six-yr old...
Love ya,
Carrot
You're little sister sounds like such a dear.
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~Fallon~
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't- A. France
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I've been through the whole "tell me about them black people" SO many times! It is uncomfortable, because you just never know how people will take it, but the kids just don't mean it that way!
Well, sometimes they do. I had one kid announce, in an elevator full of teenagers of color from a camp, "I just don't really like dark people." That one was tough to deal with, but usually, I just tackle the questions as straightforwardly as possible, grown-ups be damned!
Kids learn that race is a taboo subject when we hush them up and get embarrassed. They then make the leap that it is taboo because it is bad, and because they view the "other" race as the one having color, they apply the discomfort to the the skin color. And a negative association is born.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
That's something we try to avoid with Kaia... and he has asked us some real whoopers in really strange places. When he first met his little sister the first thing out of his mouth was "tell me about her boobs" she, obviously, doesn't have boobs to speak of, but the bones in her chest were more obvious because she was so tiny and to him they looked like boobs. The nurse was wide eyed and gaping as we tried to explain it to him but you know... if you aren't honest with them from the beginning, it will come back to haunt you later. When sis first had Aybra he asked how Aybra got in her belly in the first place because "someone had to put her there." Explaining conception and childbirth to a three year old is by no means an easy task, but the whole "the stork" story is just so much crap and causes so much more confusion than is necessary.
As adults, we need to stop and think about how we react when kids say those sorts of things instead of being outraged. It's not, as much as you may think it is, about you or even necessarily because they're being taught wrong. They're being children and children are, by their very nature, curious beings.
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~Fallon~
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't- A. France
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Righto. When kids ask these questions, when we hush them up we are shutting them up forever. We are telling them it is not OK to talk about these things, and that's the number one problem with race relations today. People don't want to talk about it so they make their own assumptions and never ask. I bet I would be embarrassed if it happened with my child, just because I don't want people to think I raise my children to think that way. But naturally a kid who has lighter skin is going to wonder why their friend is darker, and vis-a-versa. There is nothing wrong with that. I plan on (if I have children) raising them to talk about things so they will learn. I will teach them that people who are regarded as "different" are just like them. While it is important to me that they learn my Southern background, I think it is just as important that they learn about the Civil Rights movement, the history of women, and every other minority. Hell, they will probably live through the Gay and Lesbian revolution, as it is about time the dam broke on that one. It is essential we teach our children the simple and cliche message that we are all the same while unique.
Power to the people,
Brittany
I find the mind of children so amazing and wish that, with the worlds races exactly as spread out as they are, we could start back over with that mindset.... With that, there would be no racism from any side, we would all be one race
hmmm...
i love the blog.
it is great.
children are such great and precious things. not only because they tend to see people as the same but also because they can make simple things positive and they can make simple things fun i have began to realize this more and more when i watch my two yr old brother play with things simple objects such as cardboard, sticks, grass, etc. its sooo amazing!
thatgirl2089
Progress IS a sandbox (nice reference, by the way). It's so great that children can feel free to talk about everyone's differences without feeling embarrassed. To them, they are just learning about people the way they would learn to count or read. Wasn't it Bill Cosby that said "Kids say the darnedest things?" Not out of "rudeness" but out of their desire and thirst for knowledge.
This was the best post I've read in a long time. It shows that society, people of every age, are becoming more accepting of each other; when I was younger I always knew I was different, always felt different. Today, those feelings have lessened, but they're still there. However, I know that I'm being accepted for being one of a mixed breed. :)
Its good to hear
"my first name must be, "He aint sh@t", cause everytime I come through, yall be like "He aint sh@t"!....I'll be dat" --Redman
"Anything that can go wrong, Will go wrong"----Murphy's Law
That story reminds me of a funny experience I had when I was a kid. I was roughly 7 or 8 years old. One of my neighborhood friends, who is white, had an older sister who would watch us (her brother, me, and three of the other kids who lived on my street back in the 90s) play baseball and football. One day, the friend and I are spitting loogies off the curb onto the street filled with puddles/ streamlets from the rain. my friend's sister sees us spitting and comes over to us. As soon as I spit and it lands in a nearby puddle, she says "I've never seen black people spit before". She meant "black people's" but I vaguely recall her leaving off the possessive 's'. I now think back on that childhood memory and it still is funny.
This really touches my heart. It's amazing how innocent life starts out. And then adulthood comes and it goes all haywire. I think we need to learn from children. As a mentor I find it intriguing to just listen to them talk. They know so much more then we do at times.
I was adopted when I was 12 hours old to a white family. I grew up not seeing a difference, and its the only thing I know. The majority of my friends are white, but have huge hearts like mine, and I love them for that. However sometimes i feel like i'm being judged by others, that they're thinking "why is that black girl hanging out with all those white girls" but then i just shrug off the thought and have a fun time...but the world makes you notice more. Its how society has influenced me. It only shows up occasionally, but at prom, I was one happy GIRL with my FRIENDS.
I think our country has really come a long way with the black and white fight... I know it still needs help, but it has come far. I think now the poor Muslims are being targeted just because they "look" like terrorists. That just kills me inside.
Jeanna Marie
I know what you mean. Even though I was only in middle school, I distinctly remember something that happened to one of my Indian friends at school a couple years after September 11th. She'd gotten into an argument with a boy and he said "Why don't you just go back to your country, terrorist."
I couldn't believe that he'd said that. Sometimes I forget that as a country we're not over racism, but that it's only taken a new form.
I wish that child-like innocence could last.
This is a great story, and it is true how innocent little kids are and how great that can be.
I have two blonde haired blue eyed daughters, and both of them spent several years in a school where they were the minority, so they also never thoguht anything of color, you have white friends, brown friends, whatever it didn't matter. When we were at the grocery store one day my youngest daughter saw a lady that she thought was her old teacher.
She told me "well mama she looks like my old teacher"
and the lady overheard, and repeated with, "why was she black"
like they were all in one category etc. It shocked me that someone would speak to a child that way. My daughter had never thought that she looked like her teacher based on skin color alone. I hate that feeling to, standing there embarrassed, but not sure if it is for yourself or for them, because they have acted out of ignorance.
Jeanna Marie
Inspiring is what I find this story. I am only 17 and I know that I have far much more to learn. I met this wonderful guy who at the time was almost just a boy. We were in the eighth grade. He was shy and ask to arm wrestle. But he really just wanted to hold my hand. We have been holding on to each other ever since. He is black and I am white. Im unsure if he is the man I will marry, but there is a 80 percent chance it will be him. All my life it never mattered to me the color of someone. And when I met him, it didn't matter either, at least not to me. My family was accepting. But i could not believe the response of others. Living in a small country southern town, many parents told their children not to sit with me at lunch, or when invited to my sleep overs, they suddenly had a reason not to come. Now that I am older, and my friends are older, I find that many of them are willing to be mature and actually come and talk to me about doubts or questions that they have. Although I hope that the relationship prospers into more, I do have satisfaction that I at least may have increased acceptance and knowledge to more people. I understand and are currently going through the issues of being a inter-racial couple, but i also understand what a beautiful thing the love is that we share.
Im glad my parents raised me without racism. I dont care wheter a person is black, white, brown, yellow, green or blue. Im proud to say that i can look a person and not see just the color of their skin, but a person as well.
We all have the ability to think like those children. The only problem is us. You see left alone, these children would grow up to get along and not see things as black and white. We teach them to see it. Racism will never die until we as teenagers and adults can overcome it. For children its easy, for the rest of the population, its gunna be alot harder.
i was raised in a non-prejudice environment. (i am 16) although, i don't understand how none of my siblings have african american friends. it's horrible, but you don't see very many white kids hanging out with black kids. in my school, races dont mix. we have a diversity club, and I am the only white person in it!!! i would like to see more mixing of races. there's nothing wrong with it!!
It is kind of sad, isn't it? Oh well, times will change, just wait and see.
Growing up I had a friend who was mixed like me (she is black and white, I am Asian and white), and after we went our separate ways, I haven't met another mixed person (at least one that I became friends with) until I started college. The friend I met in college is also an Asian/white mix and we're really good friends!
I also have friends of other races ranging from Asian to African-American and beyond. =)
I live in a predominantly white town where it's against the rules to love someone if they ain't the same color as you. Everyday I have to face racism, because it is there. It's gonna be there until the ignorance of color leaves our minds. I have, and always have believed, black is beautiful. I believe no matter who you are, you should be proud because it is who God made you. Understand? Why be ashamed to love yourself? Why be ashamed to love someone else, just because of race? When we learn to find the innocence we once had as kids, it is then we will learn that not only is black beautiful, but so is Caucasian, Spanish, Asian, and Chinese heritage. I have faith that one day we will all learn to love unconditionally.
Massive awesomeness. Its nice to come back in here and having this blog be my first reading. Thank you for re-inspiring me :bows:
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"One of the things that draws writers to writing, is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life, by writing about them"
~ Tobias Wolffe