Being five is so much fun. It is so interesting to watch her wheels turn and to see how she interprets the things going on around her. Ella has never been one to point out someone’s color. Maybe it’s because we don’t talk about it at home. I’m very careful not to describe people using their race as the first identifiable trait – not because people aren’t a color, but because that isn’t the most important part of them. Maybe it’s because she has five cousins who are a different color. I think it’s pretty awesome that she will never be stigmatized by the thought that different is bad. She’ll never have the opportunity to think that being different is wrong in this house. She’ll never know a life where there weren’t two colors in her family.
This week she wanted to tell me a story about school. She said she was sitting in the floor next to a little boy and he looked at her and snarled, “You’re white.” I didn’t say anything just yet. I wanted to see her reaction and how she handled it.
Me: “Well, Ella. What did you say?”
Ella: “I told him it was NOT nice to call people by their colors. If he did it again, I was going to tell.”
I just laughed and asked her what happened after that.
Ella “I told, I told him I was going to. I told my teacher (the assistant in her room), ‘That boy called me white!'”
Me: “Well, what did she tell you?”
Ella: “She said, ‘Well, Ella, you are white’ and laughed. I just giggled and walked back to my desk.”
She stopped for a minute and got quiet. Then came the grand finale. “Mom, this is Pre-K. Big School. This is not baby stuff anymore and if he wants to be in big school, then he needs to stop acting like a baby. We do not call people by their colors!”
Y’all Josh and I laid in bed Thursday night howling. The story is funny, but mostly I’m proud of her for knowing that it doesn’t matter. Even if she needs a lesson on how not to be a tattle tell, I’m proud that she stood up for something and that she knows better. Mostly, though, we laughed at how incredulous she was. She said “I’m white?!” like she was offended to be such a boring color. She even inspected her arms and started talking about how white wasn’t a very pretty color. I had to remind her that Jesus picked it out just for her and that everyone was different. Even our whites.
