>Where Color Means Nothing

>A few days ago I stopped by a friend’s house for a short business meeting (I’ve got a semi-part-time job working for the website for which I’d been writing about Okinawa stuff from a parent’s perspective; now I’m not writing but helping to clean up the archives a bit).  She and I chatted about this, that, and the other thing while our boys – who are just two weeks apart in age – surprised us by playing well together and sharing like champs, even though they don’t really know each other.  At one point I asked about her stepdaughter, who’d lived here with them during last year’s school year but returned to live with her mother in the US this year; my friend mentioned that she and her family had recently been able to use the webcam and “see” her stepdaughter for the first time since last June.

She went on to tell me that her stepdaughter, at thirteen, has her first “boyfriend”; at this point, as is common, it’s mostly a hand-holding in school and talking on the phone relationship.  It’s not surprising to anyone that she’s got a boyfriend, but in the small-ish Southern town where she lives, bi-racial relationships at such a young age are uncommon.  My friend went on to say that in her current town, her stepdaughter is being pegged as “that girl”, but that if she’d lived here such a relationship would never even be given a second thought. Because here, color means nothing.

If you look closely you’ll see that Bear is in the minority here.  Most of her classmates are of mixed ethnicity and skin tone.  When I volunteered in her class last month I didn’t notice.  And she’s never noticed either.  Her classmates are just kindergartners who also happen to live here on Okinawa, coming from homes with mommies, daddies, brothers and sisters, and leading lives where they move perhaps more frequently than the average kid.  She doesn’t see them as Asian-American, Hispanic, or African-American.  They’re just her friends and classmates. 

This is, perhaps, one of the greatest gifts that she could have received at such a young age.  The gift of not seeing the difference between herself and her peers other than in their words and actions.  Because that is how she needs to learn to judge others: based on what’s inside rather than the outside.  When they say “It takes a whole village to raise a child”, never more did I realize how true that was.  Until now.  This village – our military life – gives us so much more than a paycheck, a house to live in, and full medical coverage.  It’s gives us the exposure that we so desperately need to raise our children the way they should be: color blind.

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