Stupidity in Black and White

Racism = bad, this we know.  So, naturally, we should go about attacking its existence the most effective way we know how: by dressing witches in pink and avoiding white paper in nursery schools.  Also, by lying to children about our favorite colors and instead telling them we have a particular fondness for black or brown.  In the interest of good race relations, you know.

Oh honestly.  How does someone say things like this while keeping a straight face?  Using white paper promotes racism?  In two-year-olds?  Last time I took stock of the situation, all the two-year-old children I had ever met in my entire life did not give a flying flip about anyone's skin color.  Because they don't notice such things.  They are too busy plotting how to raid the pantry.  A four-year-old might notice, yes, but that is out of mere curiosity, not out of any sense of superiority or racial specialness.  God made people lots of different colors and loves all of them equally.  End of lesson.  Whoopty-do.

But, maybe I am behind the times.  I mean, when "early years consultants" like Anne O'Connor think there is a problem, maybe there is one.  After all, where there's smoke there's an idiot.  That sounds like a problem to me.

Seriously.  Because, according to Ms. Idiot... ahem, O'Connor, we are all supposed to be traumatized if our notebook paper never reflects our own shade of skin (Covergirl Natural Ivory 115, can I get a woot woot?).  And who knows what might happen if we never have to write on green paper, for example?  Aside from shortchanging the Martians, we might read between the lines of our ivory paper that white is the best and the brightest and generally superior to black people.  I mean black paper.  Surely the reasons for using white paper couldn't be anything less convoluted, like the fact that white paper is practical because it allows one to see what is written on it.  Nope.  Too easy and non-political.

But (insert hand wringing here) studies have been done on four-year-olds who chose pictures of those belonging to their own race as having greater friend potential!  Oh, where's my (thankfully) brown paper bag when I need it?!  Because obviously a four-year-old who identifies a face similar to his own as being more trustworthy is a racist-in-the-making.

For heaven's sake, little kids don't express negative and discriminatory views about other races.  Child specialists introduce them to those negative views when they hyperventilate over little Billy selecting white as his favorite color and demand that the Wicked Witch of the West change up her wardrobe to accommodate the new spring line.

Agh!  I have to go bang my head against a wall now.  But I'm a little worried -- do you think I'll get racial-understanding credit for the fact that my bruises will be partially black?  Or does the combination of black and bruising carry too negative a connotation?

I'll see what I can do in the purple and green department.