Last week I shared with you all my challenges in discussing race
with my six-year-old, and I just wanted to share what’s happened
since. After the MLK assignment, which required him to color in
Dr. King, Justin was given an assignment on Abraham Lincoln. As
with the MLK homework, Justin was instructed to color in the
president, or he would actually lose points onhis assignment.
With no instruction from us we left him to color in the picture
of Abraham Lincoln. The image above is what he created. Yeah So
we asked him why he colored in Abraham Lincoln brown. He could
have said a number of things, like “he’s on a penny, and a penny
is brown,” or he “looked brown in the picture.” And it’s
unlikely he’s read Leroy Vaughn¹s book, Black People and Their
Place In World History, which asserts that Lincoln indeed had
African ancestry. So why did he do it? “He was a president and
the President is brown.” Wow. Wherever you stand on the debate
of Barack¹s race and its relevance to us, the impact has been
made and it is un