Skin color explorations continued

Thanks so much for your kind words, e-mails, and suggestions on Collin and Cayla's . . . exploration in skin color. We knew it was probably coming at some point and have been talking for years on how we would respond to it. I think it's probably a good thing that it jostled Flannery and I so much. However, you'll be happy to know that in the intervening weeks, Cayla no longer wants to be white (or more accurately - she doesn't want to have white skin, or even more accurately - she doesn't want skin like her moms; See! There I go again plopping my meanings on her comments). Now, Cayla will tell us in her most INSISTENT voice, "Mama! I want you to have brown skin!" Now that I can deal with. At one point, she even told Flannery that she wanted blue skin.

Years ago, sometime in between starting to teach in a school of African American students and adopting Cayla and Collin, I read parts of I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World: A Guide for Parents and Teachers by Marguerite A. Wright. It's not without its controversies (see comments #10 and #14), but I found it to contain a lot of very insightful information. In particular, Wright talks about how we see our kids observations through a veil of our own racial beliefs. For example (don’t have the book in front of me . . . I think this came from it?), in one section, a light-skinned African American girl tells her parents that she is white. They flip out and insist she is black. She disagrees. She is white! Wright explains that the child is merely making an observation based on skin color. Her skin is closer in color to the skin of a Caucasian person that the brown skin of her parents. Her parents, however, see it as a statement against their family and culture – a racial preference.

So, when Collin and Cayla told us they wanted skin like ours, we weren’t completely surprised. However, I also knew how much was riding on our reaction. It was a concrete step in parenting a child who is growing up in a racist society. We couldn’t just dismiss it and yet we didn’t want to make a big deal or they would know something was up. It’s that delicate balance of helping your child to discover things for themselves, allow them to explore ideas without always spelling out the truth, and the whole while preserving their self-esteem.

Which leads me to something I read about palms. Collin loves to point out that all our palms are the same color (this usually follows Cayla insisting she wants brown mommies). I’ve read parts of The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism by Debra Van Ausdale. In it, the author spends time in a pre-school and observes, well . . . how children (3 and 4 year olds, I think) learn about race. In one repeated activity, children are presented with a variety of paints in pink and brown tones and told to pick a color that matches their hand. The teachers paint the children’s hands the chosen color and a handprint poster is made. Some teachers willingly paint the kids’ hands any color they choose. Others gently guide the kids to the “correct choice”. However, in one instance, an African American child (with brown skin) chooses pink, but the teacher refuses to paint her hand pink. The teacher insists that her hand in brown. The author isn’t sure why the child chooses pink (ummmm, first off, maybe because SHE IS 3!!!!!!), but suggests that perhaps it is because the child’s palm (where the paint is going to go) IS ACTUALLY PINK. This whole situation makes me want to scream. I know the teachers want to create a cute sea of handprints of varying tones, but to what extent?!?!? The whole point of school and teaching is to empower students and give them control of their education (in my humble, heated opinion). I wonder if this teacher who insists that a child paint his or her hand the “right” color also corrects kids who paint leaves purple, pretend to be firefighters, talk to imaginary friends, and tell the class they are visiting the moon over the weekend.

And that’s not to say I don’t struggle with when and how to correct my kids. Although Cayla and Collin can usually count to 10, after that it’s anybody’s game: . . . 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 16, 16, . . . At first I used to correct them all the time. But, then I decided that they hear it the right way often enough and if I corrected every misconception my kids had I’d be a full blown nag.

But, back to the Van Ausdale book. I’m sure the teacher doesn’t “correct” every pre-school behavior or she’d probably be an ex-pre-school teacher fairly fast. However, by insisting that the little girl paint her hand brown, the teacher is putting a value upon skin color. That girl now knows that she should be brown and that people care A LOT about skin color. And who really knows why she chose pink. Perhaps she just likes pink, or her palm is pink, or she wants her hand to be pink, or her best friend has a pink hand, or some other 3-year old logic that I lost 30 years ago.

So, the logical end to this monster post would be a word on what we have been doing to raise our kids in a race-conscious society. But, that my friends, is a post for another day.