Brown

My five year old biracial child,

curly hair and down-turned smile,

tells me she likes every color,

except for brown. Love and an open mind,

I can accept her dislikes,

hating brown is unabashed,

Childlike. Brown is stinky poop, sticky pine cones,

and muddy shoes.

Brown is scary bears, noisy monkeys,

and basic hair. Brown is dark like night,

so it must be hiding something.

It's different from white,

white is pureness, white is light. And light equals goodness,

so brown must be bad,

So bad are people with brown skin

We call them black Homo sapien sapiens.

We categorize for comfort.

Schematics help us safely navigate

this brave cruel world.

We put our fears in little boxes

and tuck them away from the need to process

decided on their places.

Unloved spaces, Disliked faces But brown is also something

Universally enjoyed

Chocolate and the bean it's made from,

soil from which all things sprout

bark from trees which keep us breathing,

coffee we can't live without.

Sandy beaches, nuts and peach pits,

furry animals with hearts,

People with endless potential

just like their white counterparts. We all started from the same

particles of stardust

and in the end we are all fertilizer

for what's to come.

We need not be hateful

toward any one color,

we need to focus on learning

to love everyone. Maybe that's a small part

of the big problem being overlooked.

Maybe hatred stems from the schematics

we created during childhood. My daughter looks at me more closely

after she scoffs about brown.

She sees me for more than a color,

as would any child, She doesn't mean it about me.

She doesn't hate anybody,

and from me she has learned

unconditional love.

She is still young, and will learn

to choose her words more wisely,

but it makes me wonder how many adults challenge their perceptions. Maybe everyone needs to unpack

their fears from boxes,

to reexamine what they knew for certain

versus what they know now.

Maybe people just need

someone to give them permission,

it's okay to love the color brown!