Racism Sucks

As a teenager I had a poster on my wall that said "Racism Sucks".
I obviously still believe that.
I am a white girl that married a black man.
Or as I see, the perfect color of mocha man.
My husbands skin is beautiful.
Its soft and tough and in my eyes, the most beautiful color in the world.

My beautiful step-daughter has asked many questions about skin color.
Why hers is light, her mom's is white and her dad's is brown.
We inform her that she is the perfect mixture of two beautiful colors.
We've even informed her the only difference in brown skin and white skin is just melanin.
(It was in a science book.)
But we explained that that is the only difference.
That otherwise we all have the same insides.
We are only different colors, like in the rainbow.
Or her crayon box or a bag of M&M's.

My beautiful step daughter told us today that a boy said "Black people can't play here."
What.The.Fuck?
We asked probing questions after she told us this; Was anyone else around? What did you say back?
She said "I told him I have brown skin in me and kept playing"
M didn't make this up.
She never says "black people", "black skin"... it's always brown people and brown skin.
BUT we continued to ask questions before getting angry or upset,
and we kept our cool in front of her.

She's 6. Almost 7.
She's never hurt anyone or anything.
She's sweet and crazy and innocent and caring, smart and sensitive.
She's so beautiful.
And she has already had to deal with racism, when she's not even old enough to know what that word means.

After the adults talked about this without M present, we are 90% sure that the same boy that said this to her, made a comment when he heard M's mom say
"Your dad will pick you up from day care today."
"Ewww, Mary's Dad." was heard.

This kid is between 8-10.
He wasn't born racist.
He wasn't born thinking "Black people can't play here".
He was taught this at home.

We are going into the daycare Monday morning to discuss with them.

It makes me sad.
It makes me angry.
It makes me want to grab M and keep her away from all the hateful people in this world.
Sadly, that would mean she'd never be able to leave the house, as people as a whole are just hateful.

This isn't about me though.
It's about my husband, with the most beautiful color skin I've ever seen and it's about my 6 year old, who are both being hated against because they have more melanin in their skin then white people do.

Racism will never take away from the beauty that they both have.
It's just trying to explain it to a 6 year old, when it shouldn't be anything she has to deal with, that's what makes this a very hard situation.

(It don't matter if you're black or white!)