This past weekend I got to sit with my two little favorite girls! We had a three day slumber party. It was a blast. On Friday night I told them all about the Olympics and we watched the Opening Ceremonies. When the teams started their procession into the stadium we turned the channel but not before one of the African teams were making their march. It was then that my eldest “girl” made a profound statement in her innocent little four-year old voice. While drawing with her crayons, she looked up and said something along the lines of “I don’t like the brown people. I like the white people.” While I can’t remember what she said exactly, this is a close representation. It caught me so off guard that for a few seconds I just stared at her. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. When I finally found my voice, I started to explain to her that brown people are so beautiful and that she is so beautiful. Other then that I wasn’t sure what to say. What struck me and what made me most sad is that my beautiful little brown baby didn’t see the beauty in her brown people i.e. herself. My babies have brown dolls, books with brown people and are told that they are special and beautiful, but how can we combat society. How do we instill self worth and self beauty in our little ones when they are bombarded with images that differ so much from themselves? How can we get them to see their worth when a majority of the images they see are white of skin and straight of hair? Right now it’s up to me, her parents and all the others that love her and her sister (and any other little brown girl or boy that we know!) to build her up so that she sees that her beauty and brains outshine the images she sees everywhere, everyday.
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