Hair Like My Hair
My 5-year-old American son, whose father is from Ghana, knows that Barack Obama’s father was from Africa too. I have wondered, as his white mother, how race issues will affect him. I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad when one day when I picked him up from preschool, he announced:
“We are all beautiful.”
“Yes, we are all beautiful,” I agreed.
“Even if we’re brown like me and Jackie, we’re beautiful,” he said proudly, climbing into his carseat.
I hated to hear him say even. And then…one day he told me he wished he had hair like my hair. I didn’t know what to think or say – did every 4-year-old with hair different from his mother say such a thing? Or was he starting to view himself in a certain way based on having a certain kind of hair?
Then, today, as we await the inauguration of President Barack Obama, my son announced to me, proudly: “Barack Obama has hair like my hair.”
