Sun People
By Larry Poncho Brown
I was raised in a predominately white area of town. So I have a few habits that my African American counterparts question. Growing up all the little kiddies had those $10.00 yard pools so when we would get together and have a pool party no one told me that as a black girl I wasn’t supposed to grab my towel, baby oil and lay out with the rest of the girls.
My mother being the fair skinned southern belle that she is, forgot that the sun was to be avoided at all costs and figured it was better to just let me be a child. After all, our differences would be pointed out soon enough. I tell you that lady is probably the wisest person I know some days.
Anyhow… In my youth I learned that my coffee and cream skin turned a heavenly cinnamon tone when exposed to sunlight. I mean the reddish brown hues made me feel like I sparkled. I absolutely
love my summer coloring!
So imagine my shock when I was told that I was too dark by a former boyfriend.
Too dark? Huh? There was such a thing as that? He appreciated my paler skin in the Winter and Fall but as Spring approached and turned into Summer he found that I was darker than he would like. The hilarious thing about this was that he was probably the closest to Hershey’s dark chocolate I had ever dated and I loved that about him.
All of this was buried in my psyche until
Bro. Buck posted a blog about his son’s problem with being “Black” (I Don’t Wanna Be Black). After I read his blog I remembered when “The Child” was about 4 -ish and she refused to call people by their racial titles and preferred to describe them by color or as Puerto Ricans.
For example you could be black, dark brown, brown, tan, beige, white, pink, mocha (Thanks to Ricky Martin’s
Livin’ La Vida Loca) or in the case of my mother beige with polka dots (Mom has freckles). If she didn’t have the color you were in her vocabulary you were Puerto Rican. I never understood where that came from but I guess she didn’t know what “Puerto Rican” meant so to her it was the definition of the “unknown”. “The Child” was a little strange.
I guess the purpose of this post is to reinforce that race is learned. Although each ethnicity has things we should be proud of and should celebrate; at the end of the day children see the truth that we as adults over look. We are just people.
You can do more damage by pointing out skin differences and giving them value judgments than just allowing children to develop their own sense of self and the world around them.
