Today while my boys were playing I overheard them saying some things that would have alarmed me a year or two ago.
white man, brown man
by jamieivey | Apr 22, 2009 | My Story | 3 comments
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my 7 year old still gets into the occasional argument correcting someone… “no, he’s not black. he’s brown.” (or “tannish” which pretty much covers anyone from a suntan to about all other ethnic groups at her really diverse school)
adults tend to be split between amused, confused, and annoyed by the correction.
kiddo’s reaction is quite similar when you try to explain thats what they meant… or worse, try to answer the logic of black means brown.
I just love that. Kids and their view of color is something we can all learn from. My niece (who is white) gets VERY dark in the summer. People call her brown – ask what she is (they think part indian or something). She has blond hair, blue eyes… but dark! Gorgeous little girl. Anyway – when my daughter was born, and started growing (she is now 2) – my niece was so excited that she had another kid in the family who was dark like her (my daughter is hispanic)! When one friend commented recently that she was brown, she replied “I have a cousin who is even dark like me!”.
I Love kids…
Our son is adopted and he’s mixed with a little Irish, Hungarian and Hispanic. He hangs around with kids who are everything and one friend refers to himself as Blacksican. They always talk about each other in ways that crack me up … when they were about 7 they started calling all of us different flavors of ice cream … he and I are caramel … my husband is vanilla with sprinkles (a few freckles). It cracks me up. We are all different colors … but not in the same way it USED to be.