Thulani is 11 now...
After a few more sensitivity lessons at school, and yet in kindergarten, he asked me why I had put Rosa Parks off the bus. He noted, and with authority, that it was a white man who had done this to her and that I was white. I am not sure he paid much attention to my “cows have four legs and dogs have four legs but dogs are not cows” explanation.
Marshall Thulani
When a little younger than his kindergarten induction into the world of race-relations, Thulani was draped in a towel and, stepping from the shower, he glanced down at his naked body, closed his eyes and prayed: “Lord Jesus. Make me the same color as my daddy!” Opening his eyes, he glanced at his unchanged skin color and said, “Oh well. Didn’t work. I like brown anyway.”
“Just as well,” I noted, “you are going to be brown for a long time.”
“You know,” said Thulani in the fifth grade, “I am the only black boy in my class? There are girls. But I am the only black boy.”
“You know,” I replied, “I am the only white man in our house.”
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