Colouring Books

I am flesh coloured. But now I am told that I have done a whole lot of bad things to people who are flesh coloured also. When I started school in a milltown community where my dad worked with people of all flesh tones, I didn't know about different coloured skins. No one in our house ever talked about it. When we went shopping in the city when I looked around as a small child, there were lots of people and that was it. I didn't think to question who had what coloured skin. They were "people". At home we had a wood pile because we burned it as fuel in our wood furnace. I could read before I started school and had my friends over so we could sit on the top of the wood pile while I read them stories from a fairy tale book. There was Clark, a boy from Ireland, Mahinder Singh whose dad worked with mine, Joycie who was rich, Dawnie my cousin and Roger, the French boy who lived next door and had 12 brothers and sisters. We bought wonderful bread from Roger's mother who yelled at her kids all day long. We learned how to say "be quiet", "come home"in French. We also had a vegetable man who sold from his truck and had a long braid that hung down his back. They were all my neighbours whom we lived with happily. We were all just people. We kids, played in the trees and bushes on our property that had a little brook that I learned later was Brunette Creek. One day in Grade Two, I came home and told my mother that Mahinder was crying because someone took off his hat. No one told me it was a turban. It was simply part of who Mahinder was. My mother just said how mean and sad, but did not go into the racism that was evident in that action.  But the school brought up the subject. It was my first knowledge of racism. I didn't know about those kinds of "differences". When we went shopping in the big city, I couldn't help staring at a man who had no legs ( it was wartime) but skin colour hadn't enter my head. My dad had friends and fellow workers from all nations. They laboured and sweated along side each other and at home, there was no talk about some being better than others. I know that it is unusual now, but then, it just didn't seem to matter. The first time I found out that there was such cruelty was over poor Mahinder's experience. Racism and colour prejudice is obviously learned behaviour. It must be something learned early for another child to do that to my friend. It is tragic for our young because children accept all that is around them as natural and normal. Think what a precious opportunity it is for parents to offer their kids the enlightenment and the joy of loving all humans regardless of their skin colour or race and to appreciate them for their own stories. Each one is unique. I am called white and sadly, lately, I am blamed for my so-called colour for things I didn't personally do or think. Like everyone else, I can't help my colour. I am only human and flesh toned. I don't want to be called "white".