Thoughts on MLK day;

I’ve been thinking this year about Martin Luther King Day.  I’ve always thought he was a great man and had great respect for him but this year it really takes on new meaning for me.  Our youngest son, Gus is black.  Honestly, who cares in this day and age but it does seem to be a big deal to some people.  Pretty much the only time I notice is when we go to Walmart and even that not so much anymore.  He’s ours and we love him, who cares what color he is.  I just look at it like he has a different hair color and to us that’s it.  It’s also funny how our other kids never even notice that he looks different from us.  I’m so blessed to have my boys, they love each other so much no matter who’s tummy they came from.  Logan this year has been learning about MLK at school.  He just can’t understand how people can be separated by color.  I tried to tell him that in that time we wouldn’t have been able to adopt Gus and he said “that’s terrible!”  He is such as accepting little boy (big boy!), hopefully that is something we have done right having all these different people come through our lives.

Even with having this thinking, I also want to make sure Gus (and us all) know about Black History and the culture that I as a white momma (and white family) don’t really know about.  I want this for all my kids, not just Gus but I’ve been more motivated I guess to really research it since we have had him.  We have lots of friends of different races, colors but we also have the redneck friends who make the offhand comments that make my blood boil.  Sadly, we will have to be seperating ourselves from them soon.  I had hoped they would see that we are all the same but it doesn’t seem like that is happening.   I’ve been looking for books that have different looking people in them.  We’ve always loved Todd Parr, he has some awesome ones and also we have some dolls in all different colors also.  I have unreasonable panic attacks sometimes thinking about when Gus is older and if he marries a black woman.  What if he has no idea about the culture, the food, stuff like that.  Maybe I’m thinking too hard but it’s things you think of I guess.  I never want to intentionally give my kids anything less than my best so I want to educate us all in these different things. 

So next year I really want to participate in MLK day.  We live in a pretty large city, for Kansas anyway so there is always something happening that our family can go to and I’ll continue to look for ways for us all to grow and respect everyone in our community.