By Rochelle R. Tynes, June 4, 2020 — I don’t know if you taught the so-called normal kids, but when I switched over to so-called normal kids (I’m going to call them normal), I had mixed classes. You know, black and white kids we were doing everything. And everybody got along because they didn’t know they were different. They were kids. We were going slide on slide. And that’s it. Nobody said, “Well you can’t do that because you born a race.” You know, [we said] “Everybody come on, come on, come on!” And they played! And we didn’t tell them anything about colors and stuff.
When you saw them in second grade, it was a different animal, you know? So, things change. Yes, I have a neighbor, and her daughter’s boyfriend got to him and the baby was like six months and we’ve been friendly, and they took him — we talk to him about everything — no one ever said anything about people’s colors or you know, black and white, took him to the clinic. He’s sitting there waiting to see the doctor, playing with the little girl. So, he goes in his turn comes back talking about, “Well, where’d the pink girl go?” Not the little white girl. “Where the pink girl?” He knew pink. And we laughed, I mean it was just the funniest thing. Nobody told him about colors. People teach people about colors, you know? “She left me!” “Yes, because she had to go with her mommy.” But we never mentioned the color.