The Colors Of Us

We were driving home after preschool, my daughter Josephine and I, talking about our day. Then quite decisively she said, "I don't like Citta." Citta was an au pair from Senegal who occasionally worked with us in our cooperative preschool classroom.

"Oh no, you don't like Citta," I replied hoping that it had something to do with her demeanor or behavior, but with a sudden lurch of the heart.

"I don't like her skin," she continued. "I don't like dark skinned people."

My 2-year-old had touched the third rail and while we lived in one of the most ethnically, racially, and economically diverse zip codes in the US, our school drew most of its students from the more homogeneous north end neighborhoods of Seattle, resulting in a less than representative assortment of skin colors at school. I can hardly describe the spike of shame and panic that shot through me when she said it, a new parent's fear that he had somehow made a racist of his child. It took me a couple minutes to fight that feeling down, knowing that she was, of course, not a racist.

From the time my child was born I committed myself to honesty. Even as we swaddled her in her crib, I told myself that when the time came, I would be prepared to have frank and open discussions about sex and drugs and all those other topics that parents so often sweep under the rug or, worse, about which they over-react, scaring their child into hiding their questions, thoughts, and feelings at the risk of upsetting mom or dad. For sex and drugs I was ready, but I hadn't prepared myself for this one. I did manage to remain calm. I told myself that this is one of those topics that we have to bring fully to the surface and discuss without judgement.

I tried to keep the conversation casual, "I like Citta. She has a pretty smile."

"I don't like her."

"Because of her skin color. Is there anything else you don't like about her?"

"No."

"Is she nice to you?"

"Yes."

"Well, then you like that about her, right?" She didn't reply and we drove in silence for a bit. Finally, I said, "I like people who are nice."

She answered, "Me too."

"Salvador's nice. I like him too. He has dark skin."

"I like Salvador."

"And Alnur has dark skin."

"I like Alnur."

We drove in silence again for a time before she said, "I like Citta, I just don't like her skin." That was the end of the conversation for then, but it provided a nice starting point for the rest of the conversations we've had about race over the years.

I don't believe it's possible to discuss Martin Luther King, Jr. without a conversation about the color of our skin.

I like to use The Color Of Us by Karen Katz as the starting point of our exploration of skin color. It's fun how Lena and her mom walk through their neighborhood describing the various shades of brown they find amongst their friends, family and neighbors. Most of the descriptions use food similes (e.g., cinnamon, chocolate, butterscotch, etc.) and we say, "Mmmm," after each one, savoring it together. We put our arms together to compare the colors of us (one of my great eye-openers came when, while doing this, I discovered that my own skin was several shades darker than that of an African American boy in our group). And we paint with a collection of "flesh toned" paints, mixing them together to discover the endless variety of hues.

Like I did with my daughter, I try to not be heavy-handed, although it's tempting each year as some kids always insist, despite the evidence in front of their faces, that their own skin is not at all brown, but rather white or red or yellow. I don't expect to solve the world's racial challenges in our little preschool classroom, but I do hope to surface the conversation and try to discuss it without judgement.

This year we tried a new skin color mixing project, one inspired by this make-up commercial:

We used sheets from a paper artist's palette for this because I wanted a surface that didn't absorb the paint. You could use plexiglas and wipe it off between kids or even wax paper. Each child started with 2-4 small puddles of skin colors, and the only tool the children had at their disposal were toothpicks.

When we do this again, I think I'll cut the paper in half and use a tool of somewhat larger gauge than toothpicks, but it turned out to be an interesting exploration, one that resulted in all the colors of us.

As Josephine grew older and more sophisticated our conversations about race have too. I don't worry about her any longer. In fact, she and her friends have it much more together when it comes to race than did my generation. I still remember my neighbors in South Carolina freely using the "N" word to describe those people who lived on the other side of town. Martin Luther King, Jr. was still alive, yet I don't have any memories of him or his struggle being discussed around the dinner table. Maybe the grown-ups thought it wasn't a proper topic for a 6-year-old when MLK was assassinated, but I didn't hear about it until much later, as a dull historical fact rather than something that had happened only a few short years ago.

Two years after my conversation with Josephine about Citta, as I picked her up from preschool, she asked, "Did you know that everyone is the same color?" The way she said it, I knew she had a joke to tell me.

"Really?"

"Inside everybody's pink! Even the boys!"

I was a stay at home dad, the sexism conversation was one for which I was prepared.

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