How the US election taught our kids about race.

How many parents stood in front of their televisions shouting "Trump is racist," while our children stood innocently by?

How many parents had to explain what a racist was because their children heard the word for the first time this year being thrown around all over the media?

A year ago an eleven year old said to me, "If we never teach our children to avoid grouping by race, then they will never know what it is to be racial in the first place."

This really made me think, but I guess I was not ready to be seen as having gone completely mad. As God would have it, I was faced with yet another scenario that brought it to light once again.

At a recent booking reading I did, Jess shocked me by saying, "there were 4 dark children and 3 light children." I asked her where she learnt that and she replied with a very confused look "nowhere, I just thought it up."

Here's how the rest of the conversation went:

ME: "what made you think that up?

JESS: "well I was practicing my sorting, so I grouped them into tall and short, skinny and fat, long hair and short hair and dark and light coloured skin"

ME: "Oh okay. Does it matter what they look like though?"

JESS: "Not at all mom, we are all special even though we are different and God does not care what we look like anyway. I was just describing them so that I can sort them like in math."

And with that I decided against stopping her from sorting the children by the colour of their skin.

If she were lost and needed to describe me it would be very helpful to know what race I was and what was the color of my skin. Which got me to thinking...how far should we go in stopping them from describing the color of someone's skin?

I realized that by forcing all of us into one "human race" we are subtly telling our children that diversity is not to be celebrated.

Unless we find one common group to put us all into, then we are not developed as a species? If we take a step back and really think about that though, isn't that actually really a step in the wrong direction?

Why can't we be different religions and different races and still get along? Why not teach our children how to recognize differences and respect them? Why not embrace the fact that we are all different? Why not teach them that the world is a beautiful place because there are so many diverse colors, diverse personalities... diverse everything.

Our earth is like a work of art.

Our diversity makes us special and we should love and embrace each person and their special qualities.

I think I am gonna break away from the norm and raise a child not to fit into this world but one that will change this world - one that will be different and be proud. A child that sees art when she sees color. One that can embrace, love, celebrate and respect diversity.

If we stop using the word racism then it will become irrelevant and eventually be removed from the dictionary.

I will be bold and take the step to replace that word in my vocabulary with words such as inclusion, fusion and multidimensional. I will teach the concept of different, not better or worse, or strength and weakness.

Cheers to a wonderful masterpiece filled with many textures, brush strokes, colors and patterns.

#racism #parenting #USelection2016