Seeing Color

Now that the babies have been  home for 10 months, we normally don't notice all the people staring when we are out in public.  Things are just too crazy to see, and we are used to it.

At the funeral for our friend's little girl, a family sat next to us who had 3 adorable little white girls and their equally adorable black brother.  We didn't have our kids with and we obviously noticed this family right away.  Okay, so they sat right next to us and it would be hard not to notice them, but we would have noticed them anyway.  Partly because we have black kids too, but partly because you notice families that are "different".

It is still unusual to see a family with black and white kids.  It drives me crazy when people say that they don't see color.  Yes you do.  Everyone sees color, everyone looks at our family and goes hey, they have different colored kids.  I wonder how that happened.  When I look at my kids I obviously see different colors, half are black and half are white, but it doesn't affect my parenting them.  It really doesn't ever come in to play unless someone comments about it.

What I think people mean when they say that they don't see color is that they are trying to stress that they don't feel prejudice/racist.  Of course, we seem to get a lot of people that feel the need to tell us that they don't see color, and for the most part I think they are trying to make us feel good and let us know that it doesn't bother them that we have black kids.  But the saying kind of bugs me because it is something silly to say in general, and also because I think sometimes people use it to deny the prejudice feelings they do have.  I know that because I am guilty of prejudice thoughts as well even with my black kids.

I think we all have and continue to have prejudice thoughts based on how society has dealt with and formed opinions in the public at large as well as our own personal experience which we then generalize onto an entire population.  Think of some that you may have- asians are super smart, blacks are really athletic, native americans drink a lot, white people think they are better than everyone else etc. you get the picture.

Having black kids has really helped me catch myself if something not appropriate comes into my head.  And lets face it, we are all human, and need to work on sin in our life.  I will make snap generalizations about people initially based on my previous experience with someone like them.  But that's the catch isn't it?  "Someone like them" isn't them, and I need to remember that.

Anyway, didn't mean to get all serious on my first post back, but there you have it.

On a funnier side note, we saw what to expect when your're expecting, and when I saw Chris Rock pushing a double stroller with a kid in a front carrier, I realized just a little bit how ridiculous I look sometimes!!