Color Blind?

Earlier this week, as I was brushing K's teeth, we somehow happened upon the topic of the different colors people come in. (One thing D and I are always amazed at is when we ask him about kids in his class, and he tries to explain what they look like, he never refers to them as a color - he'll explain they have long hair, wear glasses, have dark skin or light hair ... but that's where he keeps the description: light or dark.)

So, here we were talking and I asked K what color he was. He quickly said he was white (which admittedly, he does get a bit pale in the winter compared to the summer.) But I was sort of shocked that he said white, because his coloring is much closer to his dad's coloring. When he was younger, he described himself as beige. It made me wonder what will my son identify as when he's older. Will he see himself as white, Asian, or something different?

Just the week before, I was with a friend of mine, who's husband is also a different ethnicity than she is and they have one child and another on the way. She asked me what ethnicity we had put on our sons' birth certificates. I told her I couldn't remember off-hand, but if I could only pick one ... I think I picked Asian (of course, now I really should go look.) We talked about how it's difficult to determine what's best for your child ... is it to pick an ethnicity that is considered a minority and encourage your child to leverage their ethnicity for scholarships, etc.

It's a tough choice for a parent ... but it quickly becomes your child's choice when they get older to select their own identity. I read an article recently about how children who are half-Asian are selecting their other half when identifying themselves for college (regardless of that half, be it African-American, Caucasian, Hispanic) because schools that have you identify your ethnicity supposedly have higher standards for Asians, so while they may score high on their entrance tests, they have to score even higher to be considered for admittance. While I can only hope - that if that is true - it will change before my children go to college that this will change. I don't want them to have to feel like they ever have to deny half their heritage for any reason.

I hope that one day, the world will truly become color blind.