One day while my daughter and I were coloring, she held up a pale peach crayon and asked what color it was. It was a seemingly simple question. My gut response was “flesh colored,” as that was what my parents and teachers had always called it. I started to say, “That’s because it’s the color of skin.” However, I stopped myself before completing that sentence because that is not true for everyone in our household.
Moments like these happen every so often and I am always surprised at how differently I look at things now that we are a transracial family. Before my son entered the family, I would have never even thought twice about calling that crayon “flesh colored.” Now it gives me pause. I did explain to my daughter that that crayon would be a good color for drawing a picture of herself and it was a light shade of orange. Then I made a mental note to see if my work had any extra boxes of the multi-ethnic crayons that have all the “flesh” colors in them! The crazy thing is I know that those crayons are never given to the students. I’m going to have to see if I can change that this school year.
Now that we are a transracial family, I even look at nursery rhymes differently. There is one song that I don’t even know the name of, but whenever we get to that track, I quickly skip to the next song. It isn’t a common nursery rhyme and to be honest, I don’t even know the name. However, when I listened closely to the lyrics one day, I realized they were making references to slaves and masters and pairing it with a catchy melody! I really wish there was a way to delete that song off the CD, as my kids love the rest of the songs. I’m sorry to say though, that I never noticed the underlying message of that song until my son entered my life.
My perception of things have changed. I notice I am hypersensitive to a lot of things that I wasn’t before. I really just try to view the world through my son’s eyes. My husband admits to viewing things differently too. I actually take offense to certain things that I never did before. Like, why aren’t there any well-known super-heroes who are black? I also now cringe when my mother-in-law tells my daughter, “Your feet are filthy, they are black!” I don’t want my son hearing that when he is older and taking it the wrong way. The list of things I look at differently seems to grow as my son grows. I am hoping it will help my husband and I raise well-rounded children who are accepting of everyone regardless of what color crayon they are!