On our way home from dinner last night, Payton and I had the following conversation…

“Mom, what are silly rules?”

“Well. I suppose they are rules that don’t make sense,” I answered.

“Rules like white people sit in the front of the bus and black people sit in the back?”

“Yes, that was a silly and unfair rule,” I told him.

Payton asked, “Who made it up?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh”

How do you answer that one? Fortunately, Payton moved on without requiring an answer.

“Mom, did you know black and white are antonyms?”

“Yeah, they are,” I answered.

“That means they are opposites. Black and white are opposites.”

“Yep, that is true.” I beginning to wonder where this is going with antonyms and race. I start to sweat a little because it’s hard to predict Payton’s train of thought.

Payton continues, “People aren’t black and white. We’re peach. They’re brown. Those aren’t opposites.”

Whoa.

Never before have I considered the antonym quality of black and white and its implication on race; how the colors black and white are considered opposites and whether that has any psychological affect when we use those words to describe people.

In February I have to register Parker for kindergarten. As I fill out the registration form for a public school, I’ll inevitably get to the section where I have to check a race.

This time though, I’m going to listen to the Way-Shower. Instead of checking white, I’m going to mark other and write in peach.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 6:56 am and is filed under Gifted Children, Proud Mommy Moments, School is for dummies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.