These Little Girls Don’t See Skin Color – So What’s Up With Adults These Days?

I have a seven-year old daughter, and she just happens to be a white kid.  Yep.  If you look at my bio, you’ll see that I am, in fact, a white chick.  Her father is also white.  So our daughter is, because of science, white.  God blessed my baby girl with a servant’s heart, a wicked sense of humor, crazy upper body strength, and rosebud lips, but he also gave her her mother’s Scandinavian coloring (well, according to Ancestry.com, anyway, and Lord only knows how accurate that racket is for 100 bucks and some spit in a tube).  Anywho, there just isn’t a whole lot of melanin in me, y’all.  I slather on sunscreen whenever I can.  On her, too.

And to me, that’s always been what it’s about.  Melanin.  Or the lack thereof.  Genetics.  Science.  I’ve never seen what the big deal is about skin color, really, and I don’t understand everyone’s obsession with it – especially on the left these days, in America, when we’ve presumably come so far from my grandparents’ generation.  I don’t understand why we’re still paying so much attention to something as trivial as whether one person has more or less melanin than another person.  It’s about as important to me as whether or not your eyes are more hazel than mine.

I just have better things to do with my time, frankly.  And so does my daughter.

Which is why I always dreaded the day my daughter would become aware of skin color for the first time and how other adults feel that it makes people different.  Because I knew it wouldn’t be from me.  I figured it would be society telling her all about it.  And I wasn’t entirely ready for it when that moment happened.

The first time my daughter heard the phrase “black person,” it was at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis.  I took her there this past Halloween with one of my best friends and her son – you know, to have some fun.  There’s a permanent exhibit there about Ruby Bridges, who was the brave little first grader to become one of the first black students to integrate the white school system in New Orleans in the 60’s.

I figured I’d walk with her through the exhibit, and if she wanted to ask me questions, she would – that’s how we roll.  She’s seven.  But, a museum worker stepped in while we were walking through, and while she was very sweet and had what I believe were good intentions, started telling my daughter the story of Ruby.  In doing so, she used words like “black” and “colored.”  And my sweet baby girl learned about the history of Ruby and segregation and stuff I hadn’t planned on discussing with my daughter for a few years.

Before that day, my daughter didn’t know the difference between black and white people.  She didn’t see people as skin colors, because in our house, we’re just people.  And everyone just has different shades of skin based on how tan we get, frankly.

It’s just freaking melanin.

And listen – the history is important.  I’m not saying it’s not.  I knew she’d learn it eventually, just like I know she’ll learn all history eventually.  I just probably should’ve had my Parenting Readiness Hat on better that day and thought about the fact that my seven-year old may not have been ready for a 60’s segregation lesson.  Or, perhaps I should have told the museum lady that we were just passing through and “no thank you, not today?”  Or, perhaps I should’ve known that I can’t bubble-wrap my kid from the grips of society forever.

Because yeah.  I can’t.  It reminds me of this video and these girls’ mamas:

Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

So, yeah –  that’s how our youngest daughter learned about black and white, y’all.  From society.  It’s how I figured it would be, and I wasn’t wrong.  It wasn’t from her Mom and Dad.  Just like that’s how these little girls learned about being twins…about being soulmates.

Because at the end of the day, kids know what’s what.  Hell, they know more than we give them credit for.  And we could learn a lot from them about so many things in this life, if we just paid attention once in a while.