Our daughter & her next learning experience
Posted on November 15, 2006 - Filed Under Uncategorized
My boss is originally from the U.S. Virgin Islands and is a very dark skinned black woman. The other people I work with, my fellow instructors, are all white folks. Erin has been good enough to bring herself and Maggie by my office a couple times since we arrived. During these visits, everyone of course gathers around the cutest little girl in the world and her lovely Mama. Maggie responds to everyone as she normally does, shy at first but after a minute or two, with smiles and general friendliness; everyone, that is, except for the aforementioned boss (M.P.). Maggie will look at her with a very serious expression on her face until M.P. reaches out and touches her. Once this happens, Maggie cries in protest. The first time it happened, I tried my hardest to play it off as Maggie being grouchy or something. M.P. didn’t say anything or seem too affected by it. But after it happened again, with others around and absent a similar reaction, I couldn’t really say anything without sounding like an idiot. This time, M.P. pretended like she was getting ready to cry and said Maggie had hurt her feelings. I feel really bad about this because I think M.P. has picked up on it. Obviously, Maggie is only doing what comes natural to her. We don’t have very many friends who are black, let alone as dark as M.P., so Maggie seems to be unsure of people with such dark skin. We don’t really know what to do about this. Erin said we need to get some pictures of black people, put them on a stick, cover up our faces with them, and talk from behind them. Kind of strange, I know, but it seems like the only thing to do. I suppose we could take her some where there are a lot of black folks but we live in Idaho and that’s not really all that easy. So, soon we may writing here about covering our faces with pictures of Kofi Annan and Star Jones!
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maybe she should babysit, so she can learn to trust her