At the beginning of the Fall semester, a young elementary age student, with ample amounts of melanin in their skin tissue, opening a new Crayola 64 box: So why is this one called “flesh”?
My podiatrist has a new “patient portal” for medical records. Some progress in that they don’t ask for “Race”, which used to be a mix of colors and geographic assumptions of family of origin. New question is: “Ethnicity?”, still expecting some combination of the previous options. My previous answer was “100 meter freestyle. My current one is now “Homo Sapien Sapien”.
During WWII it was discovered that “color blind” people could read aerial photographs better than those with normal color vision. Later, those with color vision impairment were found to do much better in seeing and identifying animals and birds in the wild. The reason for both is that camouflage is based on the disruption of normal color patterns. In seventh grade geography my parents and teachers found out why I couldn’t read the maps in class.
“Colors”, having nothing to do with gang movies.
When serving in a local parish, I found the sexton throwing away hundreds of hand-fans that had been left in the sanctuary after a visiting local “Ethnicity” church had used our facility to accommodate a funeral service that was larger than their building could hold. Tradition in some churches is that fans are provided, with advertising, by the funeral home. Instead of pitching them, I covered the fans with construction paper signs that read: “Preach it”, “Praise Jesus”, “Amen”, “Uh-uh”, “Hallelujah”, “Lordy” and other exclamatory phrases. The fans were placed in the pew hymnal racks and used regularly during Sunday worship by members of our “more shy/subdued” congregation. Even Wonder Bread (ethnicity euphemism) has colored balloons on the wrapper.
Parental feedback: son Joshua was in middle elementary school, picking him up to walk home he was so excited about three guest speakers he had heard in class. He learned from the content but was most stimulated by the method of one of the three presenters. Josh was frustrated in trying to identify the speaker by his topic, his height, his clothing, his occupation. Walking out of the school, we saw the three men in the parking lot. Josh exclaimed, “there he is, the one in the middle”. I was looking at two pink guys and one light brown one. To quote Shel Silverstein, I was “just too proud to speak”.
Helen Keller: “The saddest is those with eyes who do not see”.
Comments, questions, disagreements, snide remarks and silly stories are invited and welcomed.