First of all, there is a new-ish show on TV that we've been watching: Just for Laughs. It's different than the other reality TV shows I love to watch... it's more along the lines of Candid Camera ~ with hidden camera pranks. It's right up my alley and I just wanted to tell you guys to Tivo this one. I was laughing so hard tonight that my stomach hurts and I was *this* close to peeing my pants.
Secondly... a funny story for you. Gavin made a new friend today at his school. When I walked in to pick him up, this is how the conversation went...
Gavin: "Mom! I made a new friend today!"
Me: "Cool! What's his name?"
Gavin: "His name is Andrew"
Me: "Hi Andrew!"
Andrew (covering his eyes with his hands): "I'm not allowed to talk to strangers."
Me (a smidge taken aback): "Oh. Well I'm not a stranger ~ I'm Gavin's mommy!"
Andrew (hands still over eyes but peeking just a bit maybe to see if I'm a mean person or not?): "no, you are a stranger so I can't talk to you".
I gave up and said good bye. :)
I don't know why but that just tickled me...
And third, I wanted to point out how proud I am of my colorblind little boys. We live in a mostly Caucasia suburb of Denver but the two most favorite friends of Gavin's are both or a different race. Andrew, his new friend (who he talked about how nice he was ALL the way home!), is African ~ American. His other favorite friend, who he played with every day for the first two week... even when he wasn't yet talking to anyone because he's a little on the shy side, is half Caucasian and half African~American.
Tyler, on the other hand, who is in a class with mostly Caucasian kids, has befriended a little boy from China named Zai Zai. I have not met him yet (I get to volunteer a week from Friday so I'll get to get to know who he's in school with) but Tyler talks about him on a daily basis. Zai Zai even brought him a package of animal crackers with Chinese writing on the package!
I never had the opportunity as a child to mingle with children of other races. There were a couple kids in my grade school that were not white ~ two Pacific Islanders and a mixed Korean/Caucasian, but I don't remember any Latino kids and the first African~American kids I went to school with were not until high school. And at that, there were 2 in the whole school. They happened to be twins and they were seniors when I was a freshman. They were also in chorus, like me, and I loved them. They were so fun and full of energy ~ they brought life to choral camp.
I love that my kids are in a different position where they are going to interact on a daily basis with kids that don't look just like them. We don't really discuss race in our home ~ people are just people (well except for the *occasional* illegal alien rants from a certain husband I know). I know it probably won't always be the case but I love that when my kids look at other kids, they just see another kid... rather than a skin color. And they even seem to gravitate to kids of other races... We can concentrate on what our similarities are rather than our differences and maybe when they are grown up, they will be a little less ignorant.
7 comments:
I love it when my kids, in an attempt to describe someone, will say, did you see that person with brown skin. They recognize the skin color difference but don't know that usually that person would be called black. My kids don't really care. They will learn all about race in our society but they WON'T learn racism from me.
Actually the two girls Hannah got to pick to sit with this year at school are from different ethnic backgrounds.
i long for a world where it's not even something we notice anymore. i simply long.
what jen said!
hooray for your kids! When we moved away from Los Angeles we mourned the fact that we wouldn't be raising our child in such a multicultural area.
I'm not sure if we can ever be colorblind; I think it's ok to note that someone doesn't look like us. It's not ok to treat them differently because of it--that's what I'm wishing for.
A world where open hearts rule.
Oh, if only more adults were as 'color blind' as your children.
How wonderful to have them interacting with children of other ethnicities, it is so important!
I also enjoy the show, Just For laughs!
Amy - Move to Australia!! Ok, that might be a bit extreme. But- the Australian culture is one that prides itself on its multi-culturalism. Our little ones will grow up and be so much further ahead of us in knowing how to integrate with other cultures. It's a pretty amazing place and, in my opinion, the perfect place to bring up the kids since we're in the era of globalization.
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