My mixed daughter was told it's 'weird' that I have dark skin. This is what I told her.

Nominate an empowered woman in your life and Tory Burch may donate $5,000 to the nonprofit of her choice.

    
Explore

An African-American dad had a conversation about race with his mixed daughter in terms that a preschooler could understand.

My mixed daughter was told it's 'weird' that I have dark skin. This is what I told her.

Asking how a preschooler's day went can bring about some interesting conversations. This one took the cake.

My daughter is like most 5-year-olds, especially when her stream of consciousness starts flowing.

"The sun and moon are friends, right?"

"It's not fair that I can't eat bacon every day."

"Can we live at Disneyland?"

Sure, kiddo ... whatever you say. GIF from "Community."

But on a recent drive home from school, she stopped me in my tracks when she told me what one of her classmates said.

"Daddy, Marcy [not her real name] said your dark skin is weird. Are you weird?"

Oh boy.

For some background, my wife is half-white, half-Japanese. And I'm black. My daughter's preschool is predominately made up of white and Asian children.

To be clear, this isn't an indictment of Marcy, her parents, or the school. As we all know, kids say some pretty wild and unfiltered stuff. And in the interest of full disclosure, my kid says some pretty wild stuff too, so I'm not sure if her encounter with Marcy went down exactly the way she described it. Regardless, it certainly gave me an opportunity to have my first in-depth conversation about this with my young daughter.

I did this once before with her regarding the happy holidays "controversy" and it worked well, so I figured I'd try to explain race in a way that a preschooler could understand.

1. There are a lot of mixed children out there.

My daughter recently turned 5. If I pulled out a bunch of crayons and tried to engage her in a "yellow and blue makes green" conversation to explain the appearances of mixed children, her reaction would be like...

Try again, Dad.

But without going into too much detail on the "how" part, I explained how two people with different skin colors can create babies who are a mixture of both parents' complexion. More importantly, there are a lot of those little ones out there — from everyday children like mine to celebrity kids like Walker, the son of Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel.

Walker, pictured with his dad, Taye Diggs, is one of millions of mixed children in America. Photo by David Buchan/Getty Images Entertainment.

In fact, according to studies, the percentage of mixed-race babies in America increased to 10% in 2013. Back in 1970, that number was only 1%. About 7% of the adult population in America claims to be of mixed race.

That's when I asked her: "Isn't it cool that we live in a world where kids can look just like their parents or a little different?"

She nodded in agreement.

That was relatively easy, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

2. If you like (or don't like) someone, skin color should never be the reason why.

My daughter owns many of the royal dolls from the Disney universe. To prove another point, I asked her to choose her favorite and least favorite from the bunch.

Disney royalty (from left to right) in the form of Queen Elsa, Princess Ariel, Princess Jasmine, and Princess Belle.

Her least favorite was Queen Elsa from "Frozen."

Why?

"Because I don't like the cold."

Word. That's why we live in California. (I guess the cold really does bother her, anyway. #FrozenJokes)

Her favorite was Princess Jasmine from "Aladdin" because she loves her rendition of "A Whole New World" and wants to ride on a magic carpet someday. Makes sense to me.

Don't you dare close your eyes! GIF from "Aladdin."

Here's what I asked her next: "Did their skin color have anything to do with your choices?"

She shook her head slowly as if she wondered why that would be an actual reason to make such decisions. When I asked her why not, she said, "Because that isn't nice."

As a society, we have a long way to go in terms of achieving racial and ethnic tolerance. Heck, because of Islamophobia, some people believe we should bomb Princess Jasmine's fictional kingdom of Agrabah. You know ... just because.

My goal is to teach my daughters to be tolerant of different races, religions, sexual preferences, and anything else that makes people unique. In other words, if they choose to like someone (or not), it should be due to what's inside of that person's heart and nothing else.

3. Being "colorblind" isn't the answer. It's about noticing racial differences and embracing them.

There are well-meaning people who say: "I don't see color. I only see people." However, arguments have been made about how ignoring race can be a problem because it closes off people to the experiences of those who are different from them. I mean, it's pretty hard to empathize with someone if we think everyone experiences the same stuff, right?

That's when I asked my daughter the final set of questions. "Blue is the color of the sky during the day and black is the color at night. If colors could talk, do you think they would tell the same story about what they see when it's their turn to be the color of the sky?"

Predictably, her answer was no. But why?

"Because kids play outside when the sky is blue and they sleep when it's black." Parents know that isn't always true, but I think she knew what I was getting at.

To that point, I try to teach my daughter to be a good listener (she's 5, so that isn't all that easy). Everyone and everything — including colors — has a different story to tell. By listening to the feelings and experiences of others, we can learn more about ourselves and the world around us.

As corny as it may sound, every color has its own story. We should listen to all of them. Photo from iStock.

To answer my daughter's question — yes, I'm weird. But my skin color has nothing to do with it.

I'm a grown man who is obsessed with superheroes more than a grown man should be, I'm deathly afraid of frogs, and I don't like the taste of potatoes. In my mind, that makes me a little "out there."

We all have things that make us unique. My hope is we can create a world for our children where those things can be celebrated.

Tory Burch

Tory Burch Empowered Women

popular

This woman found out shelters in LA don't accept women with teen boys. So she made sure hers did.

True

Judy Vaughan has spent most of her life helping other women, first as the director of House of Ruth, a safe haven for homeless families in East Los Angeles, and later as the Project Coordinator for Women for Guatemala, a solidarity organization committed to raising awareness about human rights abuses.

But in 1996, she decided to take things a step further. A house became available in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and she was offered the opportunity to use it to help other women and children. So, in partnership with a group of 13 people who she knew from her years of activism, she decided to make it a transitional residence program for homeless women and their children. They called the program Alexandria House.

"I had learned from House of Ruth that families who are homeless are often isolated from the surrounding community," Judy says. "So we decided that as part of our mission, we would also be a neighborhood center and offer a number of resources and programs, including an after-school program and ESL classes."

She also decided that, unlike many other shelters in Los Angeles, she would accept mothers with their teenage boys.

"There are very few in Los Angeles [that do] due to what are considered liability issues," Judy explains. "Given the fact that there are (conservatively) 56,000 homeless people and only about 11,000 shelter beds on any one night, agencies can be selective on who they take."

Their Board of Directors had already determined that they should take families that would have difficulties finding a place. Some of these challenges include families with more than two children, immigrant families without legal documents, moms who are pregnant with other small children, families with a member who has a disability [and] families with service dogs.

"Being separated from your son or sons, especially in the early teen years, just adds to the stress that moms who are unhoused are already experiencing," Judy says.

"We were determined to offer women with teenage boys another choice."

Courtesy of Judy Vaughan

Alexandria House also doesn't kick boys out when they turn 18. For example, Judy says they currently have a mom with two daughters (21 and 2) and a son who just turned 18. The family had struggled to find a shelter that would take them all together, and once they found Alexandria House, they worried the boy would be kicked out on his 18th birthday. But, says Judy, "we were not going to ask him to leave because of his age."

Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles. "[It] is considered the homeless capital of the United States," Judy says. "The numbers have not changed significantly since 1984 when I was working at the House of Ruth." The COVID-19 pandemic has only compounded the problem. According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), over 66,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area were experiencing homelessness in 2020, representing a rise of 12.7% compared with the year before.

Each woman who comes to Alexandria House has her own unique story, but some common reasons for ending up homeless include fleeing from a domestic violence or human trafficking situation, aging out of foster care and having no place to go, being priced out of an apartment, losing a job, or experiencing a family emergency with no 'cushion' to pay the rent.

"Homelessness is not a definition; it is a situation that a person finds themselves in, and in fact, it can happen to almost anyone. There are many practices and policies that make it almost impossible to break out of poverty and move out of homelessness."

And that's why Alexandria House exists: to help them move out of it. How long that takes depends on the woman, but according to Judy, families stay an average of 10 months. During that time, the women meet with support staff to identify needs and goals and put a plan of action in place.

A number of services are provided, including free childcare, programs and mentoring for school-age children, free mental health counseling, financial literacy classes and a savings program. They have also started Step Up Sisterhood LA, an entrepreneurial program to support women's dreams of starting their own businesses. "We serve as a support system for as long as a family would like," Judy says, even after they have moved on.

And so far, the program is a resounding success.

92 percent of the 200 families who stayed at Alexandria House have found financial stability and permanent housing — not becoming homeless again.

Since founding Alexandria House 25 years ago, Judy has never lost sight of her mission to join with others and create a vision of a more just society and community. That is why she is one of Tory Burch's Empowered Women this year — and the donation she receives as a nominee will go to Alexandria House and will help grow the new Start-up Sisterhood LA program.

"Alexandria House is such an important part of my life," says Judy. "It has been amazing to watch the children grow up and the moms recreate their lives for themselves and for their families. I have witnessed resiliency, courage, and heroic acts of generosity."

From Your Site Articles

Denver donates bison to Cheyenne and Arapaho nations, citing conservation and reparation

Canva

Prior to European colonization of North America, millions of bison roamed the Great Plains. By the turn of the 20th century, those numbers had dropped to less than 1,000. The deliberate decimation of buffalo herds was a direct attack on the Native American people, who colonizers saw as an obstacle to their "Manifest Destiny," and who the U.S. government engaged in a systematic attempt to eliminate or force into docile submission.

For thousands of years, bison were a sacred, inseparable part of life for Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, used for food, shelter, utensils, and clothing, in addition to spiritual and emotional well-being. Wiping out the bison population nearly wiped out the Native tribes they were connected to.

Though bison numbers have increased significantly thanks to conservation efforts, governments are still grappling with the ugly legacy, and some municipalities are taking steps to try to repair some of the damage done. As one example, the city of Denver, Colorado has taken the step of giving some of the city's bison population managed by Denver Parks and Recreation to Native American tribes engaged in bison conservation efforts.

Keep Reading Show less

Pfizer

#ScienceWillWin

We asked three people about how vaccines have impacted their lives. Here’s what they said.

Images courtesy of John Scully, Walden University, Ingrid Scully

True

Since March of 2020, over 29 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the CDC. Over 540,000 have died in the United States as this unprecedented pandemic has swept the globe. And yet, by the end of 2020, it looked like science was winning: vaccines had been developed.

In celebration of the power of science we spoke to three people: an individual, a medical provider, and a vaccine scientist about how vaccines have impacted them throughout their lives. Here are their answers:

John Scully, 79, resident of Florida

Photo courtesy of John Scully

When John Scully was born, America was in the midst of an epidemic: tens of thousands of children in the United States were falling ill with paralytic poliomyelitis — otherwise known as polio, a disease that attacks the central nervous system and often leaves its victims partially or fully paralyzed.

"As kids, we were all afraid of getting polio," he says, "because if you got polio, you could end up in the dreaded iron lung and we were all terrified of those." Iron lungs were respirators that enclosed most of a person's body; people with severe cases often would end up in these respirators as they fought for their lives.

John remembers going to see matinee showings of cowboy movies on Saturdays and, before the movie, shorts would run. "Usually they showed the news," he says, "but I just remember seeing this one clip warning us about polio and it just showed all these kids in iron lungs." If kids survived the iron lung, they'd often come back to school on crutches, in leg braces, or in wheelchairs.

"We all tried to be really careful in the summer — or, as we called it back then, 'polio season,''" John says. This was because every year around Memorial Day, major outbreaks would begin to emerge and they'd spike sometime around August. People weren't really sure how the disease spread at the time, but many believed it traveled through the water. There was no cure — and every child was susceptible to getting sick with it.

"We couldn't swim in hot weather," he remembers, "and the municipal outdoor pool would close down in August."

Then, in 1954 clinical trials began for Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine against polio and within a year, his vaccine was announced safe. "I got that vaccine at school," John says. Within two years, U.S. polio cases had dropped 85-95 percent — even before a second vaccine was developed by Dr. Albert Sabin in the 1960s. "I remember how much better things got after the vaccines came out. They changed everything," John says.

Keep Reading Show less

science