Today I showed my children the statistics from the website for If the World were a Village, after the book by geography teacher David Smith. The girls were incredibly thrilled to learn that they were among the majority of the world’s people.
First I asked my older daughter, “Would you say more of the kids at school look like you or like Patrick?”
She hesitated. “Like Patrick,” she said.
I nodded. “But if you look at the whole world, more than half of the people are like you and less than one quarter look like me and Patrick.”
I shared this website with them as they were putting on sunscreen, getting ready to go swimming at a friend’s apartment building.
“I like being brown,” Meg said happily. I reminded her that I had written a poem when she was younger called “My Beautiful Caramel-Colored Daughter”.
“I know,” Meg said. Then she asked, “which one of us (Meg or her sister Regina) was caramel and which was peanut butter?”
I explained that when she was younger I had called her caramel while her brother had said that she was peanut butter. She said she didn’t like peanut butter.
Meg then asked, “now which of us do you think looks more like peanut butter?” and a moment later, “which of us is darker?”
I told her that I used to think she was darker than her sister, but that was when Regina was a baby and hadn’t been out in the sun much.
Patrick said that Meg was darker. “A little bit,” I agreed.
“I don’t like being darker,” Meg said then. “I’m going to put more sunscreen on.”
At least having said she likes being brown is a start, I guess.
Please see these related blogs:
How Do My Adopted Kids Think About Skin Color?
I Don’t Like My Skin, Part Two