A Matter of Color

I don’t know why it’s so taboo to say that someone is a different color than you.  It’s not an insult or an insinuation of lesser value.  It’s just an observation.  They are a different color.  I don’t think acknowledging that is racist.  I think associating a value or social standing to someone’s color is racist.  But just noticing it and pointing it out is not.  People are too sensitive about those things.

SR was telling us that her little 4-year-old daughter was talking about one of her friends at school, and when SR asked her who she was talking about, her daughter said, “the little brown girl.”  SR was appalled and told her daughter that she couldn’t say that about people.  And my question is, “Why not?”

If we were to think from the innocence of a child instead of the ignorance of an adult, then we wouldn’t see anything wrong with that.  Her friend is brown.  That’s a fact.  It doesn’t make her less of a human being.  It doesn’t make her less of a friend.  Our terrible history has wired us to freak out about such things, and we pass it along from generation to generation.  Now, SR’s once-innocent daughter might feel that something is wrong with her friend.  A thought that she might never have developed on her own has now been implanted in her head.

Honestly, I don’t even think about race or someone’s skin color until someone points it out to me.  I mean I notice it as a passing thing, but only to recognize how God has made us all unique and beautiful.  I don’t think of someone else as anything but human.  I try to view people like God views them…with the same innocent, accepting eyes as SR’s daughter.