Being four and brown

We all inadvertently notice color at any given moment in time, it surrounds us. I am now seeing color more and more through a four year olds eyes, and he may be bias, but I feel like I’m learning more and more about myself through him.

When Zoey was born, Zaryus got to gaze at her through the nursery window with his Poppy (my dad) before he came to see me. He walked into the room and boldly announced, ‘Mom I don’t see any brown babies in their only white ones.’ Before this we had never really talked about race, he had never said anything, and I hadn’t felt the need to mention it, he has had contact with white people, and his great grandmother, aunts, cousins, uncles, they are white. But nothing seemed more bizarre to him than me, a brown person, having this white baby. It just wasn’t done.

When first introduced to his sister in the hospital he was still skeptical, everyone laughed when we recounted the story during their visits, Zaryus thinks he has a white sister.

Since then he has noticed race amongst other things more and more. He has called a mentally retarded person retarded to their face while licking his ice cream cone like it was nothing. We were mortified; I did later call everyone who was listening to then tell them the funniest shit ever that my son has said. Retarded is another one that’s my fault I use it as a noun, verb, adjective, it’s one of my personal favorites. How was I to know that he would use, and use it well and right?

Back to the color issue, since his sister has darkened up he now claims her as his own. And the only reason I really thought about writing this, a one sided discussion on race and a four year olds perception is because on Sunday we were driving on the highway and there was a car creeping with its hazard lights blinking. Zaryus noticed the same thing that I noticed; he said ‘look mom’ that car has flags on it’. Flags it did, confederate flags flapping in the wind, and the driver going 30 on a highway so everyone could know who and what they were about. “Why?” my son asks, he doesn’t see other cars with flags.

Why? To me race has always been interesting, coming from an interracial family, but looking black and I’ve never claimed that I am not. I married a black man, embraced the black community and left the rest behind. It’s not to say that I don’t like white people. I don’t generally like anyone, black, white, especially Asian but that’s a whole different topic we could spend days on. But I never really harbored on these thoughts until my four year old continuously started to bring it to light.

So how do I explain to my child that there is such a thing as racism, that he as a black man is at a disadvantage and that his sister better go to college and aim to snag a football player or doctor while she’s there. That was always my plan honestly, marry well have babies and cocoon myself with likeminded people. Some of this I have done, though Arthur is nobody’s doctor.

How do I explain to him that there are places in this country that he should not go, that there are people who hate him and I enough to proudly slow down and let their confederacy show. That we drive past a town in Virginia that people actually pay to go watch people pretend to be slaves. Who the retard is who is pretending I’ve always wanted to know, seriously I want to go and ask them like what the fuck, why are you dressed up as a slave singing songs and letting people take pictures of you. I mean the money can’t be that good.

We also have come to the conversations of different shades of people and how they identify to race, he has realized what Spanish people are, we are all in this household wondering what his teacher is, he thinks white, I think Spanish his dad just doesn’t know, and Zoey is too young to care. Why is this important in our life? I know that socially it is imprinted in our minds somehow, but my son he’s never been called the N word, he’s kissed a little white girl on the mouth, he goes to farmers market weekly, I have tried to teach the kid culture, if there is such a thing.

“Well mom, in the beginning Zoey was white, but now she’s light brown. And me, daddy and Travis were dark brown, and Mima she’s white, and Jeanine she’s brown white.” This is a conversation he has almost every day, to teach my son how to be black and a man in America is terrifying,