Pride is Pride, is Pride. I don’t have children, but if I did, I would want them to see the world just as this child does. From this point on, that black child will not feel inferior to anyone because of his race and it might be corny but President Obama made that possible by virtue of who he is, what kind of man he is and what kind of president he is turning out to be (in just six days).
Last week I shared with you all my challenges in discussing race with my six-year-old, and I just wanted to share what’s happened since.
After the MLK assignment, which required him to color in Dr. King, Justin was given an assignment on Abraham Lincoln. As with the MLK homework, Justin was instructed to color in the president, or he would actually lose points on his assignment. With no instruction from us we left him to color in the picture of Abraham Lincoln. The image above is what he created.
Yeah So we asked him why he colored in Abraham Lincoln brown. He could have said a number of things, like “he’s on a penny, and a penny is brown,” or he “looked brown in the picture.” And it’s unlikely he’s read Leroy Vaughn¹s book, Black People and Their Place In World History, which asserts that Lincoln indeed had African ancestry. So why did he do it?
“He was a president and the President is brown.”
Wow. Wherever you stand on the debate of Barack’s race and its relevance to us, the impact has been made and it is undeniable. Of course we corrected him and told him that not every president is brown by default, but dangit if I didn’t smile on the inside. His mind is open to possibilities that we never imagined at his age, and that is change I can believe in.
As always, be well
CF
