This morning while watching the 400 metre runners at the Olympics, my husband said to Sam (our 3 year old) "Daddy used to do that when he was younger"
Sam was amazed and happily exclaimed " Was you black daddy? You was black? You was, wasn't you daddy?"
When we looked, all the runners were black and Sam has recently learned all the colours. He just said what he saw. It wasn't a racist. He just hasn't reached the stage of awareness that stops us from saying what we think.
It reminded me of a holiday I took to Mexico a few years ago.
We had been to Jamaica the year before and where we stayed there were loads of stray cats and they used to hang around meowing to be fed.
When we were in Mexico, we were playing crazy golf when suddenly a load of cats and kittens appeared. My husband Dan turned to me and said. "Oh my god, it's just like Jamaica here".
That's when we became aware of the couple standing close by. They were African Americans and were speechless at what Dan had just said. What do you do in that situation? We couldn't explain as we didn't know them, and I doubt they would have believed us anyway. We were stuck in that same resort with that poor couple for another week. What must they have thought of the nasty English racists? :oops: