A while back, Love Generously wrote two articles called Community Values and Community Values, Part Two. If you didn’t read them (and aren’t going to) the gist was that her husband got a new job much further from their home, but they chose not to move because they’d have to live in white bread suburbia, and they thought it was better for their Hispanic kids to live in their current mixed race community. Part Two gave a real life example of how their community affects them in that capacity (her daughter going to the ballet and getting to see a Hispanic ballerina).

We had some disagreement on my part because my personal opinion was that I’d rather live in Whitesville than lose an extra 2 hours a day with my kid’s father. I felt that time with DD’s father would trump having easy access to a rainbow of faces in daily life, arguing that you could still take your kid to the ballet or wherever the non-white people abound if that was important to you.

My opinion on that hasn’t changed – I’d personally still choose having my husband for 2 extra hours; however, I have been thinking recently how much what she said has merit in my family’s life. Thankfully, my family wasn’t put in the same situation as LG’s (having to choose where to live because of a job change), which makes my decision much easier. I don’t have to think about things like that because DD sees Indian people all the time and all the other races, too, on a daily basis. She’s the only brown kid when we go somewhere as often as she’s in the racial majority (or just the “brown colored” people majority anyway).

One of DD’s favorite haunts is our city’s Children’s Museum. Though the museum is located in a primarily mixed ethnicity area (white being the most prominent still though), on any given day the majority of kids there may be black, due to field trips and camp trips of primarily black schools, which we have a large number of in our city. On a recent trip to the museum, I was given pause to remember LG’s articles. The museum has a miniature room (sized for little kids!) that DD likes, and she and I were having a tiny tea party. A trio of black boys (about 7-8 yrs old) from a field trip peeked in the room (we were the only ones in there – it’s like our secret place) and asked if we were having a tea party. We said yes and asked if they’d like to join us. They did and DD served them all tea and cookies, which they proceeded to pretend to eat. She was so prim and proper serving them, and I couldn’t believe they’d want to have “tea” with a 4-year-old! But they all seemed to have a blast.

She’s never once asked me about another person’s skin color or obvious cultural differences (like clothing, etc.) – not when we go to an Indian event and I’m one of the only (if not only) white person there, not at the zoo where it’s a multi-culti fest complete with a large number of Amish visitors, and not even when we visit the museum and both she and I are usually in the minority. I have wondered on occasion if she’s just not attuned to it, but I don’t think that’s it.

Later that evening at dinner, she was telling Saresh how much fun she had at the museum and about how she made new friends at her tea party. Then she says, “I liked their hair. It was short and black, like yours used to be before you shaved it.” Then she babbled on about the rest of her day. I loved that the boys’ hair is what caught her fancy that day, and that they reminded her of her dad.

DD’s growing up so differently than I did (rural Whitesville) and it gives me a lot of hope for the future, especially when I see grown-ups behaving so badly. For her, people are just people and she expects them to be/look different because that’s all she sees on a daily basis – a great big bunch of people who ALL look different from each other. She likes to look through my magazines and say which of her friends the kids in the magazine look like. She never points out their eye shape or skin color or even asks any questions about them – it’s just, “this girl looks like Sophia!” (Chinese) and “this girl looks like Melissa!” (mixed race) and “this girl looks like Claire!” (white). When everybody’s “different,” basically no one is to her. It’s a non-issue, and I hope it stays one in her life. I think she will be confused as she gets older when she finds out how much of an issue some people make it. I wish I could feel what it was like to look through her eyes right now.