After the dedication page is the following quote "Your mother is so white, she went to her own wedding naked". I laughed and then I thought, what makes kids say stuff like that?
I picked this book because I grew up in upstate New York on Lake Erie and there was one black family (at least one that I knew of) in the entire town of Hamburg, NY. When I went to high school we moved to Williamsville, NY and I think there were two black families in the whole town. I wanted to learn what it felt like to be the minority instead of the majority.
Chapter One ~ Conley, who is white, starts the books off by discussing the baby kidnapping incident that he talks about on the back cover of his book. His mom, who is white, was pregnant and he was most excited that the new addition would be a sister and not a brother. In his excitement and enthusiasm to have a baby sister immediately, he kidnapped a black sleeping baby girl from the playground where he lived. She was in a stroller and he rolled the stroller up to his mother and announced he had found his baby sister. In her shock and embarrassment, Conley's mom returned the sleeping baby to her own parents that happened to be the local leaders of the Black Separatists movement. Needless to say, Conley's mom did not make a new friend.
This incident made me reflect that very young children don't understand why one person is one color and another person is another color. Meaning when Conley took the little black girl and told his mom he found his sister, it didn't occur to him that a black child didn't biologically come from a white family. How then do we come to understand that groups of people that live together, or families, are usually, but not always, arranged by color?
What are your thoughts?
Great question. At what age do we begin noticing differences in appearance. I, too, grew up in town with zero diversity. I do not recall having an epiphany about race. My God Son's father is African American. His mother is Anglo. Her husband is Anglo. In turn, Isaiah (my God Son), has a brother and sister that look similar during the winter, but once summer hits, Isaiah is much much darker than his siblings. He doesn't seem to notice. Do we perhaps digest this difference internally? Is it apparent after it's pointed out to us?
ReplyDeleteI remember the exact moment when I noticed that people were not all the same color. I was not more than 4 or 5 years old, and in downtown Columbus with my mother and younger brother. A black man walked by -- the first black person I had ever seen (we lived in a small town north of Columbus) and I told my mom in astonishment, "That man needs a bath!" Needless to say, the man was offended, my mother was horrified and apologetic. After he rejected her apology and walked off, she explained to us that God made people different colors so the world wouldn't be a boring place, and that we were never to think someone was bad or dirty because they were a different color. Fast forward 50 years, and I am married to a black man; my kids from my first marriage (to their white father) didn't blink an eye at their black stepfather.
ReplyDeleteSandy
What great personal stories, Sandy and Ashley! Growing up in a town with a large university, I had many classmates from all different races, ethnicities, and classes but, still, it was mostly white. So, my realization about race came not from having to learn to accept people who looked different than me but from all of a sudden realizing that it probably IS a different experience to be the racial minority in a group. Since I felt comfortable around other races, I had never thought about how this was probably pretty easy for me since I was always in the majority. Anyway, I thought this book looked really interesting. I'll keep reading your blog!
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ReplyDeletedon't think children notice race any more than any other physical characteristic. I recall a conversation with my children at the public library a few months back when my 9yo son noticed the bulletin board display for "February Black History Month" and my 7yo daughter wanted to know what we were talking about. I pointed to the board and explained the title, trying to connect their attention to the fact that they people all were highlighted for a common reason. When I asked her, "what do all those people have in common?" (talking about the display of pictures of 6-7 famous black people). Her reply. . . . "They're all old?" :-) I loved that to her what stuck out was their age before anything else.
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