People, not Color

Hi!  I'm late, I know.  Sorry!  Life you know...sometimes keeps me busy!

Here's Kelsey's new doll!  At first her name was Katie, though I'm told she has a new name now.  Kelsey bought her with her birthday money and I whipped up some clothes for her yesterday, lest she have to hang out in that leotard all the time!

shirt tute here, I made up the skirt

pants tute here

dress tute here

There's something that I just love about this doll though...I love that she's not Caucasian.  More specifically, I love that it never crossed Kelsey's mind when she was choosing.  There were 8 dolls on the shelf that day, 6 of them blonde Caucasian ballerinas, 2 of them (according to their labels) African-American gymnasts.  We are totally blessed to live in a very diverse community.  "White" kiddos are in the minority at our school, where 66% of our kids are Native, Samoan, or Filipino.  So when my kind-hearted 7 year old saw this doll on the shelf, she didn't see a "brown doll", she saw a doll that looked like her friends.  But better yet, she didn't even probably consciously think about it.  She saw her, liked her and bought her.  The end.


I remember when I was team-teaching first grade with my dear friend April and February rolled around.  We worked in a huge district in a predominately white area and it was mandated that we would "teach" Black History Month.  We both shook our heads and wondered why on earth we would point out differences that our kids didn't see.  Isn't there plenty of time for that later in life?  Don't kids already find enough differences on their own?  Sure.  There were some relevant lessons that year.  The most poignant being that without incredible people like Dr. Martin Luther King April and I would have never been able to teach together in the first place!  But still...we were both left with this bad taste in our mouths about the way we were told to do things.

So.  I know I have rambled a bit here, but  my point is that I am happy that my daughters are growing up in a diverse environment where we celebrate each others cultures of origin while at the same time coming together to create our own community culture.  I am proud that my daughters see people not color.  And I am delighted there are lots of dolls on the shelf to choose from!