What color is beautiful?

NEA Today, Oct 1999 by Segura-Mora, Alejandro

Lost of my kindergarten students have already been picked up by their parents. Two children still sit on the mat in the cafeteria lobby, waiting. Occasionally, one of them stands to look through the door's opaque windows to see if he can make out a parent coming.

Ernesto, the darkest child in my class, unexpectedly says in Spanish, "Maestro, my mom is giving me pills to tum me white."

"Is that right?" I respond, also in Spanish. "And why do you want to be white?"

"Because I don't like my color." he says.

"I think your color is very beautiful, and you are beautiful as well," I say.

I try to conceal how his comment saddens and alarms me, because I want to encourage his sharing.

"I don't like to be dark," he explains.

His mother, who is slightly darker than he, walks in the door. Ernesto rushes to take her hand and leaves for home.

White privilege is a value deeply ingrained in our social fabic. "Oh ook at him, how pretty and blond looking he is," is a common expression if the baby has European features and coloring. And if the babies came out dark, like Ernesto? The comments are often, "Hay, pobrecito, sali tan prietito"--which translated means, "Poor baby, he cam out so dark."

Even among co-workers, I hear similar comments.

Without knowing it, Ernesto opened the door to a lively dialogue in our classroom about skin color. I read to studens Nia Bonita, written by Ana Mara machado (Kane/Miller Book Publishers, 1996), which tells the story of an albino bunny who loves the beauty of a girl's dark skin and wants to find out how he can get black fur.

I started by asking my students if they thought the girl on the book cover was pretty. I was not surprised that several students thought the little girl was ugly. When I asked them why, one student responded, "Because she has black color and her hair is really curly. Emesto added, "Because she is blackskinned. "

"But you are dark like her, Stephanie quickly rebutted to Emesto, while several students nodded in agreement. "How come you don't like her?"

"Because I don't like black girls," Emesto quickly responded. Several students affirmed Ernesto's statement.

"All children are pretty," Stephanie replied.

In their defense of dark skin, other students offered similar comments: "Her color is dark and pretty," "All girls are pretty, or, "I like the color black."

Most of my kindergarten students could not articulate the social depreciation of dark skin, but I was amazed by their willingness to struggle with an issue that so many teachers ignore, avoid, and pretend does not exist.

At the same time, it was clear that many of my students had already begun to internalize notions of white privilege. I try to create a space where my students can begin to look critically at the many forms of unequal power relations that, even at the age of five, have already begun to determine whether they love or hate their skin color, and consequently, themselves.

At the end of our discussion of Nia Bonita, I told my students that, in my opinion, the girl in the story is beautiful. I said that my skin color is beautiful. I caressed my face and kissed my cinnamon-colored hands several times happily and passionately, so that they could concretely see my love for my skin color. I told them that Gerardo, a light-complexioned student, has beautiful skin color and so does Ernesto.

Despite our class discussions on beauty, ugliness, and skin color, Emesto did not appear to change his mind. But I hope that every time Emesto takes one of his magic pills - vitamins his mother later explained - he will remember how his classmates challenged the view that to be beautiful, one has to be white.

A former kindergarten teacher, Alejandro Segura-Mora is now a sixth grade teacher at the Slauson Middle School in Azusa, a town of 40,000 in Southern Califomia. You can contact Segura-Mora by E-mail at alejandro. segura-mora@cgu.edu.