Within a family, different family members may even take on different skin tones. Some may be paler than others, some darker.
Then you get families, like mine, where two cultures become one. When two members of the same family, take on completely different skin colours.
It means that wherever we go, if people don't know us, and don't hear me being called Mam by my wonderful brown skinned daughter, they may not automatically acknowledge us as family.
But that is what we are!
Family!
Two cultures. One family!
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| 2 cultures + 1 family = LOVE |
I dare say you very rarely give your skin colour a second thought. It's the skin you are born into and the one you accept as being you. That is no different for our family. Some days I even forget that we are so different on the outside. We see each other as people, not a skin colour.
Others on the outside though want to stick labels on people. Especially when people are 'different' to what they know or even accept.
You can start school or a job and one question they ask is your ethnicity. Within our house, we would need to tick two boxes. White and black.
Not ever, in this modern world we live in, does there ever appear a box entitled 'coloured'.
I guess a 'coloured' option box would get us all confused. After all, I have one colour skin, you may be a shade different from me, someone else another and another.....you get the picture.
You see we are all 'coloured'.
We are like a box of crayons. Some colours may be similar, some exactly the same, and others completely on the other side of the rainbow. Each unique within their own right. Each needed to fill the box and each with their own purpose.
So why on earth do people still refer to my daughter as 'coloured'?
She is no more 'coloured' than you or me! She may be quite a few shades darker than me but she certainly isn't 'coloured'.
This comment drives me scatty! Why we need to label someone by their skin colour I do not know. if there is a time when we need to describe a person on the physical appearance then please get educated as to what would be a better term to use.
For purposes of application form tick boxes, then yes we fall into the 'white' and 'black' categories. On a personal level my daughter refers to her skin tone as brown. (Which indeed her skin colour is)
How you refer to your skin tone/colour is your choice. You have a right to have that choice respected. You also have a responsibility to those around you to respect their choices.
So please, educate yourselves and your children that no matter what colour someone's skin colour is, it's the person on the inside who counts. Educate them that the word 'coloured' should have been abolished with the slave trade, because being white is no more superior than being black, brown, yellow, etc. We are all one tribe - human. We make a colourful nation, each with a unique culture and set of customs behind it. Educate them that sometimes, a family can consist of more than one skin colour, and that yes that may be different but it is OK. Let children ask questions, so they learn about cultures and traditions. Don't shut them down and be scared of asking in the fear of offending someone. We all make mistakes and say the wrong thing from time to time. If you're reading this and thinking, oh dear, I think I've said that to her and offended her, then no, I'm not offended. I just ask that you learn so my daughter, and others, know they can be proud of the skin they were born into and are not second best to any one else in the communities they live in.
We are one family made up of two cultures. Our two cultures join with many others to make our nation the multicultural nation that it is.
Imagine a box with only one colour crayon. You wouldn't get a lot of pictures or creativity from that. We need every colour to make the box complete. Just like we need every culture in our wonderful world and in each of our communities to make them beautiful and complete.
