One of the neighbor kids came to play at our house last week, playing and painting and hanging out with my 7 year old daughter, Evelyn, and almost 5 year old son, Cristopher. Kevin, the 5 year old neighbor, was painting with the kids, creating a landscape with people in it. Evelyn was teaching the younger kids how to mix primary colors to make new paint colors.
“Evelyn, I need ‘skin’ color; can you make ‘skin’ color for me?” Kevin asked.
I was nearby and because the sociologist in me wanted to see if Kevin saw his own skin as the “norm”, I asked Kevin, “what kind of skin color do you want Evelyn to make for you?”
I wondered if he would see his own skin color as the “normal” skin color. We often see our own skin color as the “normal” skin color, and in the U.S., products often, especially historically, have both covertly and overtly insinuated that white or peach is the “normal” skin color.
I wondered if Kevin would see his own skin color as the norm.
“Skin. Like, you know, the regular skin color,” he replied, as he painted on a large sheet of paper.
I asked Evelyn if she could make ‘skin’ color for Kevin to paint with.
“Sure,” Evelyn replied, and happily started mixing her paints.
I went back to slicing vegetables.
Cristopher, sitting at the table as well, painting an abstract masterpiece (he’s really a horrible painter; no skill at all, sorry, kid), piped up quietly but with confidence, and said what I wish I could have said, but didn’t, because it’s not my place with other people’s children.
“Kevin, human skin comes in all different colors,” he dipped his brush into a random color, brushed his paper with no focus. “It comes in black and gray and brown and white.” He shrugged his shoulders, dipped his paint brush again. “Humans are all different colors.”
It’s such a huge leap, to not see your own skin as “normal” or “regular”. It’s something I’ve never explicitly taught Cristopher; he’s only 4, I don’t have discussions about race or ethnicity with him. But somehow, he’s understanding that there is no “regular” or “normal” when it comes to skin color. He’s seeing it in the world around him, I think, that everyone is different, that his own skin color isn’t the “regular” color.
And if he doesn’t see his color as “regular” or “normal”, then he won’t see other colors as “irregular” or “abnormal”. It gives me hope that maybe if he’s able to understand that “normal” isn’t really normal at all, then he won’t place the value of a human in the how well their skin color fits his “norm.”
Marianne Paiva, recovering paramedic and adrenaline junky who comes to Ethnography.com after 4 years driving ambulances very, very fast. When she gave up life in the fast lane, she decided to study paramedics instead, and wrote the book, Breathe: Essays from a Recovering Paramedic, which every trauma junky and ambulance chaser should buy multiple copies of from Amazon.com.
A professor told her after she finished her B.A. at Chico State in 1999 that she could study paramedics as a vocation, if not a living. This she has done off and on for ten years or so, while also teaching Introduction to Sociology, First Year Experience, Sociology of Stress, Population, Ethnicity and Nationalism, and other courses for California State University, Chico. On slow days in class, she wakes students up with stories about ambulances, and funny stories about freshmen. In her spare time, she gardens, tends to her children, and writes creative Facebook postings, and Ethnography.com blogs. You can connect with Marianne at her website www.mariannepaiva.com and also purchase her collection of essays here from Amazon.com. Marianne Paiva is a lecturer in the department of Sociology at California State University, Chico. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.