"Brown Skin" Kids...

Friday when I picked my son up from his first day at the new school I gave him the normal twenty questions. Did you have fun? Did you like your new teachers? Did you make any new friends? What were their names? What did you play on when you went outside? You get the idea. I had my landlord in the car with me. I had taken her into town shopping to get us both out of the house. She is a former teacher also and a grandmother so she joined in on the questions. He was full of excitement and joy about how great the new school and teachers are. Great, just what I wanted to hear. I asked how his behavior was and he just couldn’t recall that. My landlord and I looked at one another each with a big knowing smile. Sure, the kid who can remember everything else can’t remember if he got into any trouble that day. Later he did tell me that he had to sit in the sad chair twice. I confirmed it with the teacher yesterday. They were simple little boy things with him being excited and wanting all the attention. The teacher didn’t make a big deal about any of it. Once more I’m very pleased. The other old bat had a cow if he ran in the hall or decided to spin like a top when they sat on the floor. Laid-back teacher equals less stress on him and me! When we were asking him about his new friends he told me there were a lot of brown skin kids in his class and he doesn’t like brown skin. What! My jaw dropped and I looked at my landlord in repulsion. I wanted to stop the car right then and there and beat the racism out of him. I softly told my landlord that dad was going to have a cow over this one. I knew this was going to be one of those subjects that was going to take more than a quick “that’s not polite” talk. I delved into his reasoning as to why he doesn’t like brown skin kids a bit more. He said that their skin hurt when pinched. Okay, why was he pinching kids to begin with. My landlord and I both talked to him about how it didn’t matter what color of skin you have you are going to feel pain if you are pinched. I felt a little better about his comment now. Maybe it was just odd perception he has that darker skin feels more pain than pale skin. I went on to let him know that he didn’t need to be pinching anyone and not to let anyone pinch him. I mentioned it to my husband later that evening. We agreed that we had to find the right way to bring up the subject and handle it in an age appropriate way. While I was cooking dinner he was once again telling me about his day and who all he played with. He mentioned once again that he didn’t like playing with the brown skin kids. I called dad into the room this time. Dad was having a hard time keeping his cool. See, Dad is half Asian and was often teased by kids for being a “chink.” Most of the time he lived in the south during the 60’s and 70’s so there was even stronger racial tensions. Dad’s first words were, “I’ll be dame if a child of mine is going to be a bigot!” I had to calm him down and remind him that the boy is only five and that maybe we just haven’t exposed him to a variety of people. We sat him up on the kitchen counter so he was at eye level with us. This also let him know mom and dad meant for him to really pay attention. We explained that the color of one’s skin did not determine what the heart of the person is like. We went on to ask him if he liked Mr. C. at daddy’s work and Mrs. G. who was one of the teachers he loved last year. He said yes then said that the brown skin kids didn’t want to play with him. Oh, it makes since now. Unless you have taught or lived in a tight-nit southern area you might not realize how much racism there is towards Caucasians. In my first four years of teaching I taught at an inner-city school in Savannah, Georgia. It was the fist time in my life I experienced racism being directed toward me. I had student’s that called me ugly racist names and one little devil child in particular that told me his mom told him he didn’t have to listen to me I was just some rich cracker. Yeah, shows how much she knew about me. One of my closest friends at the time was my paraprofessional. The other paras would get upset with her if she spent too much time with that “white woman.” She became sick during her pregnancy and had to be admitted into the hospital for a few days. She let me watch her two older boys so that they could easily ride to and from school with me each day and it would free up their dad to stay by mom's side. Her family about died; they couldn’t believe she would let a white woman look after her kids. They just couldn’t believe that I could love her and her sons. I didn’t blame the student’s for their outlooks. It came from the culture they were being raised in. Here is what really shocked my husband and I; we weren’t raising him in a way filled with strong likes or dislikes of other ethnic groups. I guess I can take comfort in the notion that he did describe these kids as “brown.” We have tried hard to not use color in our descriptive talk of people so he wasn't familiar with "black." I guess we just haven’t exposed him to a variety of playmates of all ethnic backgrounds. I pray that what we said and how we presented it was appropriate and got through to him. How do you explain to a five year old that ones hue of skin is as generic as ones color of eyes. I spent the weekend making up stories and role-playing with him to secure the lesson. Time will only tell if it worked or not.