Reply #17: Yes, it is easy to explain to a child [View All]

[Number23]

And the beautiful, simple logic expressed by your niece made me laugh out loud. She sounds like a wonderful, smart little girl with alot of "know" to quote Smokey Robinson at MJ's memorial. :)

But you can tell a a beautiful, cocoa-brown skinned child how gorgeous and beautiful they are until the stars come out. But if that idea is not reinforced, it has the potential to become lost.

My daughter is bi-racial and living in a country where all things blonde are glorified. How do I prepare her for this? She will get all of the love and reinforcement that she needs from her family, especially from her mother. And considering that she is now only 2, I realize that I have plenty of time to worry about this, or so I like to tell myself. :)

But one day, the time will come when she will wonder why more curly-haired, brown babies with big, brown eyes aren't sold at the toy store. And after that, how soon before she's wondering why there are so few women who look like her at her school? In the media? In government?

For some reason "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison is coursing through my brain right now. It's amazing. I spent the first 30+ years of my life doing my own thing and not worrying about what anyone thought about me. Now that I have a child of my own, I spend probably WAAAYY too much time worrying about EVERYTHING, including the impact of racism on my baby. I just can't seem to stop!

It just amazes me that her little experiment has been around since 1968 and the education system can't employ a similar one in classrooms.

I feel exactly the same way.