March 21, 2013

Today, Finnley had a revelation about how he sees color.

Finnley – “Mommy, skin really only comes in three same colors. Light-light brown, brown and dark brown… but it’s all just brown. Shirts come in lots of colors, though!”

It’s unbelievable how enlightening a five-year-old’s perspective on the real difference between races can be. It’s the shirt colors.

Growing up in a small, river valley village, where tradition was as stuck as the mud to the old rusted pickup trucks that roll along the back country roads, racism was still an unfortunate ignorant perspective passed down through generations, as if the world stopped turning half a century ago.

My parents were adamant about raising my sisters and I aware of the gravity of racism, and encouraged us to see the world differently: through the eyes and lives of an individual connected to humanity by the blood that flows through our veins, not the skin that holds our bones in place.

Not only was racism an issue, but diversity in races was practically non-existent in our isolated back mountain community, smacked dead in the center of hyper-conservative Pennsylvania. I remember an ‘Our Town’ performance during a heritage day celebration that was written to reflect the history of our tiny village. The most humbling and humiliating skit revealed the role of our town as an integral home base for the Klu Klux Klan, boasting the tiny, one room church (I could see from my bedroom window growing up), as the host for ceremonies hailing white supremacy.

Despite understanding the historical significance of not omitting the reality of the KKK’s occupancy there, I watched in disbelief as most of the audience sat unmoved. It was, after all, just a play. However, our town (predominantly a retirement community) had lived through the era when hatred based on the amount of melanin in your skin was considered reason enough to not merely segregate colors but to actually prevent anyone of color from calling ‘our town’ home.

I’m so grateful that my family raised us to believe that there is only one race. The human race. What I find so perplexing is that hatred is taught when love is innate. In fact, when babies are born, they are not ‘color blind’ but can barely distinguish between shades. It’s our responsibility as parents to nurture them to perceive the colors they see as they grow.

Colors are one of the first things most parents teach their children, proudly having them identify the colors of brightly painted blocks and balls as soon as they can speak. I can’t help but wonder how different the world would be if we all learned to see inanimate objects in color and human life in shades of love.