Racial Awareness

This happened a month or two ago, but I keep forgetting to post it.

Fiona's at an age where she loves babies. When she sees a picture of a baby she has to point it out to everybody, she has toy babies at her house and each of her grandparents various homes, and when a new baby starts coming to day care she talks about the baby incessantly.

Her favorite baby at day care is Taylor. When Fiona arrives at day care in the morning, if Taylor is already there Fiona runs straight for her. And Taylor bounces excitedly up and down when she sees Fiona as well.

Taylor is also the only African-American child at day care.

One day recently Fiona and I were out for a walk and we started talking about skin. Fiona, who will never have trouble convincing people she's of Scots-Irish descent, mentioned that her skin was light.

"Yes, you have very fair skin," I told her.

"Taylor's skin is dark."

"That's right," I said, preparing for my first diversity discussion as a parent. "Some people have dark skin and some people have light skin. Skin comes in all sorts of different colors."

"Yeah," said Fiona, nodding. "When I was a little baby, my skin was dark like Taylor's."

Um....

I explained to her that Taylor's skin was dark because that's how Taylor was born, just as Fiona's skin was light and was going to stay that way.

But given how many parents can tell some hideously awful story about the first time their child noticed different races (usually involving loud yelling and pointing in a public place), I thought Fiona's first awareness was pretty charming.