Skin Deep is Not So Deep

I had a funny experience last week that has changed how I view skin color. Biruk managed to skin the back of his hand. As it healed, he kept picking the scab off so that one could see the new layers of skin forming. As you may see from the photo on the left, the first layers of new skin that formed were exactly the same shade as my skin! I'm not saying that he gouged a big divot out of his wrist and that this is what color he is deep down inside. He only shaved a few layers off the top, and there he is, just like me.

I'm not sure how I perceived his brownness before. Did I think that he was brown through and through? Did I think that his brown skin imbued the rest of his body with otherness? Was I simply thinking that of my three children, one of them looks (and thus is) very different from the rest of us?

As I spent a few days contemplating this white patch of skin, bordered by an edge of brown so thin I could barely perceive it, the significance - or maybe even the existance - of that brown skin just shrank and dwindled. Of all the things that make up Biruk, his skin cells account for an exceedingly small percentage of him.

There was a very interesting article in Newsweek last week about race. It discussed some studies that explored how children perceive race. It turns out that the children most likely to have racist views were those whose parents never discussed race or skin color with them. Those parents were often white liberals who, in their desire to not be racist, essentially denied that there was any difference between white and black people, when their children could plainly see that there IS a difference, but that apparently it's not ok to talk about it. (If you're interesting in reading it, the link is:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989.)

One of the exceptions to the findings above were families where parents had adopted children of different race. That would be us -- we have to talk about it, all the time! Ironically, all our conversations up to now have been about acknowledging the differences between us. But at this moment, I'm so much aware that almost all of my body and almost all of Biruk's body -- with the exception of this thin layer of skin cells, among other things -- is exactly the same. So for the time being, if you ask me a question about what it's like to have such a different looking person in our family, I will look at you in wonder, and say "What do you mean? He looks just like me!"