For The Big Brown Eyes...

Hi!

With August drawing to a close, and September stretching her golden arms to embrace us, a person can't help but let their thoughts drift to the upcoming school year.

Although I, personally, haven't had kids in the school system for quite some time, I now have grandbabies who are wading into their educational journeys, with countless recesses, spelling tests, and number 2 pencils in their foreseeable futures.

Along with learning about weather, decimals, what makes plants green, and dangling participles, this is where they will first learn how to make and cultivate friendships outside of family and/or daycare.

This, sadly, is also very likely the place where they will first experience exclusion, racism, and bullying, in its many forms.

"People hate people who are brown or black."

Where would a six-year-old get this impression?  Kindergarten.

Where would the little ones who spew this garbage get it from?  They absorb it from their surroundings,. Just like they imitate gestures and mannerisms, they soak in attitudes and beliefs.

That there can, in this age of limitless fingertip information providing the ability to research virtually every different culture of the world, still be those among us that choose to be ignorant to the fact that no one shade of human is superior to another, is utterly beyond me.

If you don't know better by now, it's a choice. If you are choosing to perpetuate that ignorance on to the littles in your life, that, my friends, is just every kind of wrong.

Judge people on their merit. Judge them by how they treat others. If you feel you must judge, then judge on the things that speak to who they are.

Making decisions about what kind of person someone may be by the tint of their skin, their hairstyle, how many tattoos they do or don't have, their height, weight, the labels on their clothes, their vehicle, or lack thereof, or any other superficial nonsense, is just that, nonsense.

It's unbelievable that in 2018, this crap still goes on. But, it does, and as long as it does, we have to acknowledge it, stand up to it, throw a light on it, and unteach these racist attitudes.

Teach your littles to be good friends, to be kind, to be generous, to be inclusive, to have empathy. Let's show their generation how to be better than ours.

Let's create a place where big, brown, sad eyes, perched upon the chubby cheeks of a six-year-old no longer have to shed tears that fall because of ignorant words. Words delivered through the mouths of babes, but planted and cultivated by those charged with the responsibility of teaching them right from wrong.



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For the Big Brown Eyes.....


May you cherish the gorgeous hue of your skin, as it exquisitely wraps the beautiful gift that you are.
May you discover quickly, that those who live through a warped filter are few, not worthy of your thought.

May you come to understand that every colour of the rainbow is needed, or it ceases to be.
May you find friends worthy of your kind and gentle soul, don't fear, you'll find them, you'll see.

May you embrace who you are, for you are so precious, so amazing, so many love you, from near and far.
May you cherish the gorgeous hue of your skin, as it exquisitely wraps the beautiful gift that you are.



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Check out! I'll be at Word On The Street in Saskatoon Sunday, Sept 16! On Broadway in Saskatoon.

Until next time...

www.margyreidbooks.com