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!