Monday, December 3, 2012

Wren Wonders how Black People Were Made

The babysitter had a word with me last night.  She was concerned that she had one of the Big Conversations with Wren at bedtime and she wanted to fill me in.  Apparently Wren had asked how Black People were made.

Sasha explained that she had to be careful to ask a few questions to understand what he was asking.  It seems, Wren is under the impression that all people are innately pale and that in some cases special techniques, magic, luck, chance etc occurs to make a person turn black.

"How do people turn their skin black?" he wondered at bedtime.

She explained that people were just born black, or yellow or pale or tan and came out of their mother's tummy that way.

"How does the mother's tummy DO THAT?" asked Wren, now altering his world view to allow that babies gestate in a kind of dye-bath environment which stains them a particular color.

Sasha tried to explain that the color of the baby was from the parents.  That parents before that baby had a different color skin.

For Wren that only pushed the issue BACK a generation.
"But how did that MOTHER get dark skin?"

Apparently, Wren has a notion of an incredibly pale progenitor.  I shall have to explain at some point that it was just as likely the other way around and that his paleness is the question.

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