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Sunday, August 7, 2011

What Are You?

The other day I was coming home from an amazing shoot for the Movement and I went to my mom’s house to pick up my oldest son. I get there and my son is in tears while my mom’s level of anger is through the roof.

Apparently race came up in the house and when she told my 7 year old he was Black, he told her he didn't want to be Black. Now outside of the Movement, Civil Rights activism runs extremely deep within my family as my Great Grandfather (in addition to many other things) was an attendee to the famous MLK march on Washington.

So to mediate the situation I take my boy to the side and I asked him “what are you?” He replies “I am Brown skin”, and it dawned on me that children are as pure as they are literal. My son was bothered to be called a color that for him doesn't exist within the human species.

In my home I do not teach color in that sense and my mother wasn't aware of that. Coincidently my mother is married to what we would call a White man. When he entered I asked my son what was he and he gave the classic Indigenous people name; he said pale/pink.

Labels: child, color, mother, race

1 Comments:

At January 9, 2012 at 5:25 PM , Scila Con los Rizos said...: This is so true. Such is the innocence of children. How enlightening.

Skin color started out as a non-issue at my house. In fact when my oldest was only 5 years old, he made an innocent comment that angered an African American mother. He had more than one friend with the same name so referred to her son as 'the brown Shawn'. The exchange afterward wasn't very pleasant. She was irate.

However, as the kids grew older their heightened awareness of race, stereotypes, brainwashing by the media and other social pollutants made it very difficult to maintain a healthy mindset on this matter. As a result, 2 of my 4 kids have 'chosen sides'.

They are half African American and half Puerto Rican. They have chosen to stick with the 'lighter' side which they feel is more acceptable. Very difficult.

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