What Color is your Farmer?

My intent was to lay low on the "personal views" topics for a bit - but dang things that spike my personal views keep coming up and writing them out makes it easier for me to not attack the goofballs I come in contact with in person. This particular topic doesn't give me any feelings of agression - more it is just very important. Honestly - this goes directly back to all the posts I did in Feb. about White Privilege. While it is getting easier for me to spot - some days I miss it completely. I completely missed this one. CK brought it to my attention after it occured. She was on the ball.

So what happened? Well - TheKing has been creating tons of art work lately. CK and I joke that the art work they do in class really seems to be more done by the teachers then by our little artists. TheKing doesn't see it that way - He LOVES to show off his art work and as soon as we get home each day he has me tape it up on the window to display it. SuperStar and Spidey are great at coming home and noticing the art work and cheering TheKing on for his abilities - which makes it all the more worth the tape we waste doing it.

Lately the art work has been about farms. One day a horse, another a pig and then a chicken. The other day TheKing brought home a farmer. Now, I picked him up that day and my mind was on "did he poop? please I hope he didn't poop yet." - not what was the art work. The teachers made a big deal about how TheKing and his bestfriend, E, (CK's son)picked the same color shirt for their farmer (see all the pieces of the farmer had been "precut" by the teachers - shirts, overalls, face with arms and a hat - shirts were in different colors for choice) - not caring I went back to "did he poop?" The teachers talked about the little bit of potty training that day - congratulated TheKing for doing so well (he had not pooped) - and I left with the boys. We dropped off E and headed home quickly - to get on the potty (my mind is focused on potties this week).

After the potty - sticker - gummy bear and taping up the farmer - the phone rang. She wanted to know if I had looked at their art work. Yes, I had. She wanted to know what TheKing's farmer looked like. Not getting what she meant I responded "farmer like". She asked what color TheKing had chosen for his farmer. Then I told her the story the teachers had mentioned about the shirts. She asked if I knew if the farmers faces and bodies had come in different colors. It hit me. She asked if I noticed if any of the farmers coming out of the room had been anything but white (well, really they were peach colored). No - they were all peach colored farmers. I had completely missed it.

White Privilege.

CK was ready to shoot an email. Rightly so. She would have been nice about it - just point out that our brown sons might have liked to have a choice in skin tone - heck, the peach colored kids might have wanted to create a farmer that wasn't peach - but none of them were given a choice. Later CK mentioned that she forgot to send the email, but I had already composed a conversation to be had with the teachers - nicely. These are very nice peach colored women who I am sure did not intend to limit my brown colored childs view of where brown colored people fit in the world. And on the next school day I approached the teachers and - giving them the benefit of the doubt (I mean hey, my son is surrounded by peachies all day long - maybe he was given a choice and chose a peach colored farmer because that is what his world reflects to him most of the time) - and asked if there had been any brown hued farmer faces or bodies available for use in that art project. They were apparently not surprised I mentioned it. They admitted there had not been another body color choice and immediately started to apologize - the reason was that they had said they ran out of other colors of paper - and that there was only DARK brown left to use. My thought was BOTH of the boys ARE dark brown so it would be a perfect choice. They were worried you would not see the drawn on eyes and mouth (in black ink) on the dark brown paper. Hmmm......so basically using a skin color that matched the boys colors just didn't work well in the scheme of the artwork in the view of the peach colored teachers. Lame, but they were being polite. And, I wasn't looking for an apology really. I mean honestly, if CK hadn't pointed it out I might have completely missed it. Very obviously it was uncomfortable for them to have me ask this question. I think I made them feel guilty - or like I was putting them on the spot instead of just kinda pointing out something that might help them help students better in the future. I wasn't looking to make them feel badly - more looking for an awakening of their thought to see all the students in their class and consider what their students might be needing as they begin to explore who they are and create through art images that reflect themselves. It isn't fair that the peach kids are given peach people to represent their world and the brown kids aren't (regardless of the darkness of the brown colored paper).

White Privilege.

In STL (I know - again with the STL comparisons) our preschool teacher had these. When I first saw these Multicultural Markers I thought they were the coolest thing. After the peach colored farmer came home I immediately remembered these markers and I made a bee line (what is a bee line anyway?) to the local teacher store to pick a pack up for everyone of our kiddo's teachers (if I had the money I would buy one pack for each kid in the classes they are in - but these are $6!!). When I got there they had 1 package. The woman who ran the store was sweet and said that they normally have more, but that they don't order them as often as the others and they are quickly purchased.

My request was for her to please order more - many more. Our teachers need them. I bought the only pack they had and gave them to our preschool teachers. They thanked me - had never heard of such a thing - and tucked them away. They explained again that if they had More Money to buy More Paper, but they just didn't have the funds. So I clearly explained that in the public schools the parents are asked to buy all sorts of things for the class - I am not opposed to helping purchase some skin tone colored paper for this class either. And I will be.