Skin Color by SB (100 books to read .txt) 📖

A child of five or six squeezes the skin on her father’s fingers. “I’m darker than you,” she says.

“That’s ‘cause I’m ‘light and sweet,’” he smiles, playfully poking her, “and you’re honey colored.”

“Light and sweet?”

He removes the lid covering his coffee cup to show her. “I’m that color.”

“Oh…” she sings. Then pointing to a lady seated along the station’s wall, “What color is she?”

He gently pushes her arm down, “Don’t point, baby.” Looking at the lady’s tan, he answers, “She’s orange. She stayed in the sun a looong time.”

“Why?”

“Some people do that to look that way.”

“The sun will turn us orange too?”

“Ha,” he laughs. “No. We just get blacker.”

She looks again at the lady before asking, “Was mommy in the sun a long time.”

He laughs again. “Too long.”

She returns to watching passers-by. “What color is he, daddy?”

“He’s…” He watches the man walk. “He’s pink, I guess…”

“And she?” The girl points again.

And again, her father lowers her arm. “She’s cream colored or milky.”

“She’s really white. Like a ghost.”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “She needs some sun.”

The girl’s head swivels. “What color is Chinese people? They milk too?”

“No.” His attention turns to a walking Asian. “She’s porcelain. Like the doll pop-pop got mommy last year. Don’t she look like that?”

The girl nods. “She’s pretty.”

“Um-hmmm…” He agrees as the Asian’s heels clack past the two. “What if she’s not Chinese?”

Smiling, the girl says confidently, “She’s Chinese.”

“What if she’s not from China? She could be from Japan. Or Korea…”

“Where’s that?”

“A place called Asia. That’s where China is too.”

“Oh…”

“So we call Chinese people Asians ‘cause they from Asia. Just like people call us African-Americans because…?” He looks for his daughter to complete his thoughts.

“Our people come from Africa,” she smiles.

“That’s right, baby.” He kisses her brow. “So what do call Chinese people?”

The girl stares at her father.

“We call Chinese people Asians.” He smiles as she takes it in. “Say it.”

“A-jins.”

“We call Chinese people…”

“A-jins.”

“Good girl.”

* * *

The father is seated before a flickering tube, sleeping. The child hops on the cushions next to him. “Why is the sky blue?”

“Huh?”

She repeats, “Why is the sky blue?”

Her father rubs his eyes and mutes the tube that watched him sleep. Sitting up, he answers, “Because that’s the way God made it.”

She maneuvers his right arm over her shoulders and snuggles in beside him. “I thought you said you don’t like it when mommy tells me that.”

“OK,” he chuckles. “It’s blue because that’s the color the sun makes it. Do you remember that rainbow we saw?”

She nods.

“Do you remember why we saw all those colors?”

“The water in the sky was splitting the sunshine.”

He smiles, shaking his head. “That’s right. Well, there’s always water in the sky, right?”

She nods again, “Like clouds.”

“Yeah, like clouds,” he confirms. “Well, the water in the sky splits the sunshine into to color we see. But it’s not always blue.”

“Uh-huh…” She argues, tickling him.

“Nuh-uh…” He answers, squeezing her. “Sometimes it’s red or orange or purple. Remember that day we stayed in the park real late and we watched the sunset?”

“Oh yeah,” she smiles, showing two missing teeth. She looks behind him at a potted plant. “Why is grass green?”

“Because they make something called ‘chlorophyll.’” He gestures for her to repeat after him, “Clor—”

“Clor—”

“O”

“O”

“Fill”

“Fill”

“Chlorophyll.”

“Clor-o-fill.”

He smiles. “When grass eats up all its food from the dirt and plays in the sun, it makes chlorophyll and that’s what makes it green.” He pokes her on her side. “Just like when we eat our food and our bodies make stuff that help up grow.”

She studies the plant some more, then asks, “Do we have stuff that makes us Black?”

He nods. “They’re called ‘melanin’ and ‘melatonin.’”

“Mel-uh…”

“Toe-nin.”

“Mel-uh-toe-in.”

“Melatonin,” he says. “In Africa, Black people’s bodies make that to protect them from the hot sun. When people moved away from Africa to places that were cooler, their bodies didn’t need so much melanin, so they got lighter with melatonin.” He had lost her and laughed. “You know what else melatonin does?”

She attentively shook her head.

“It helps us sleep and little girls sleep so…”

“They can grow to be big,” she laughed before nuzzling her face into his side.

“That’s right! And I think it’s time for you to grow.”

Publication Date: 01-22-2010

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