“We Don't Say Those Words in Class!”

 

When I was young about 9 or 10, my friends and I were at our corner store buying some candy when a lady and a little boy about 4 or 5 came into the store. The little boy was looking at us very strange. He then pointed out our friend and said, mom why is he two colors? Of course his mom told him to be quiet, and she had a frown on her face like he had done or said something wrong. Our friend did not say anything, and neither did we. Matter of fact we all pretended that we did not even hear the little boy because we had heard this remark before and had seen how people reacted to our friend skin problem before which was called vitiligo.

 

Therefore I believe by the mother telling her son to be quiet sent the message that my friends skin problem was something bad or something that should not be noticed or talked about. On the other hand she could have said something as simple as, sometimes our bodies do different things on the inside that cause our skin to make two colors. Something as simple as that I believe could have gave the boy some type of answer until he was old enough to really understand what vitiligo was.

 

Moreover if this had occurred within my classroom as an anti-bias educator and we were outside of the classroom on a trip, and I heard one of the children make this remark I would have said, (if I did not know) I would have said I really do not know but we will look it up on the internet when we get back to the classroom. Or perhaps if the person with vitiligo was an adult that they had made the remark to, I would ask the person themselves if it was okay for them to example to the children about their condition. This way the children would have an answer even if they did not understand completely. Furthermore by handling the situation this way I believe the next time they saw someone that looked like this with vitiligo they would not respond in a negative way because they would have learned that the medical condition has a name.