After dinner this evening, I took Emmerson to a large, popular local playground to meet up with friends for a little playdate. As I held Emmerson's hand and we walked around the playground waiting for our friends, a little boy about 7 or 8 years old came up to us and asked me a question. "Who is she looking for?" he asked. "Pardon me?" I said, because I wasn't sure what he meant or if I had heard him correctly. "Who is she supposed to be with?" he asked.
And then it dawned on me. Here I was, a white lady holding the hand of an African-American baby at a playground with quite a few black families (as well as Asian, Indian, etc.). He just thought she was lost. "She's with me," I told him. "I'm her mom." "Oh," he said and trotted off, completely satisfied with the answer. The little boy was also African-American.
Our exchange is interesting for so many different reasons! What do you think?
69/398 smiles
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My little non-sleeping peanut is at Grandma’s today – yay! Lucky for me
that was already the plan before the eight or whatever wake-ups last night.
My fi...
3 hours ago
3 comments:
I think it was very sweet that he was so satisfied with your answer. We get asked a lot if Ellie is adopted. Right now it doesn't bother me so much, but I wonder when she's old enough to understand the question if it will. Of course, tonight someone asked if we were her GRANDPARENTS -- UGH -- do I look that bad?
It's funny, I had almost the exact same thing happen to me today. I've had that happen in one form or another a couple of times at the zoo too, always young kids and the like. Luckily I really never run into anybody being rude towards us, so I'm happy about that.
When I was principal at a school (in the 1970s) and hired an African American kindergarten teacher midyear - in an all white school - the parents were so surprised when they came for Parents Night. Not one of those little children ever told their parents that their new teacher was Black. It never occurred to them to say so - they loved her. Little kids like the short answers.
Same school - we had a family with several children directly from Kenya - and they found great acceptance among our school families.
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