Yesterday at Daisies, we hand-rolled beeswax candles for Mother's Day presents. The girls really enjoyed picking their moms' favorite colors, rolling the candles, and putting together the decorative cards. Sis chose purple for me and green for Mama, but I wasn't supposed to be watching!
But as we were enjoying our craft, I saw one little girl standing before the others and pulling at the corners of her eyes, "Chinese, Japanese . . ." and I knew where she was going. An old rhyme from childhood, that ended with the speaker pulling up her skirt and showing her underwear, but not before slanting her eyes up and down. "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!"
I hurried over to the other side of the room, thankful that Sis was nowhere nearby, and sat the girls down for a talk. I told them that rhymes like that could hurt people's feelings because it made fun of them and the way they looked. I knew they didn't want to do that--I'm not sure they even realized what was wrong with pulling up and down on your eyes with a singsong verse. And I wasn't about to talk about racism and prejudice particularly; I just wanted them to be more sensitive and compassionate. They of course denied saying anything of the sort, as kids would, and then said they didn't even know that Sis was Chinese. And then they seemed to feel bad.
On the way home, I had to talk to Sis about it because if girls are reciting this in Daisies, no doubt it's spreading around school. I remember it going around my school when I was about that age . . . and we didn't know it was insensitive and hurtful; racism never occurred to us. Sis hadn't heard of the rhyme and wasn't sure what it even meant. We talked about the inherent worth and dignity of everybody and how talking about how people look or act or where they come from isn't respectful. We talked about what to do if people said such things that hurt her feelings, how she could say that wasn't nice or appropriate, walk away, and then tell an adult. As they always do, Sis nodded in understanding, and probably in some boredom, as did Bud when I repeated it all to him later.
I knew such things would eventually rear their ugly heads. Teasing, mocking, insults, tinged with racism, sexism, sizism, homophobia, are common on American playgrounds. I'm glad I got to talk to the kids before it was directed at them, though no doubt when the time comes it will still be painful. For now, they are mostly innocent of it all, untouched by some of the ugliness in our world.
Just like her candles, to paraphrase Willy Wonka, so shines a bright light in a weary world . . . .
\It is to be regretted but throughout life some people will mock or deride you for a perceived difference from the norm, even for being left handed. Often tall people are called 'Lofty' not in an unkind way but some tall people don't like it, they have to accept it with good grace. We had a well known politician who could not pronounce an 'r', he was mildly mocked but had to put up with it, now we have a new England football manager with the dame difficulty and he suffered on the front page of a tabloid; for £2.5 million a year I would put up with a lot of ridicule. Oddly, as a boy I was called 'slit-eye' which was partly true, I did not like it but did learn to live with it. Help them to develop a thick skin and work out a smart riposte.
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