color - ThisIsCommonSense.org

“My friends were asking for the ‘skin-color’ crayon,” explains 9‑year-old Bellen Woodard.

She realized the request was for the peach-colored crayon but, being the only black kid in her third grade Loudoun County, Virginia, classroom, she also knew her skin wasn’t peach-colored. As her mother told Washington Post columnist Theresa Vargas, it made her daughter feel “uncomfortable.”

Bellen used the term “dis-included.”

She and her mom discussed what to do and her mom proposed, “Just hand them the brown one instead.” But Bellen had an even better idea: “I think I just want to ask them what color they want because it could be any number of beautiful colors.”

Indeed.

“So that’s what she did,” wrote Vargas. “She started saying those words. She then heard her teacher say them, too. And soon, her entire class was talking about skin color in a way that went beyond peach.”

The third-grader also designed a kit called “More Than Peach” featuring not just peach-colored crayons but also colors such as “apricot,” “burnt sienna” and “mahogany.” In no time, her kits have been requested across the nation and now the Virginia Museum of History & Culture is adding one to their collection.

People come in so many wonderful hues and colors. It is something to celebrate — just as young Bellen Woodard has done.

Which reminds me of my distaste for the term “persons of color.”

This term of art has become ubiquitous. Unlike Bellen’s efforts offering inclusion and understanding, “persons of color” serves to separate us. Because I’m labeled “white” … I’m “dis-included.”

But I’m not white (a color) or translucent; I’m peachy — perhaps tan sometimes or bright red when sunburned.

We are all persons of color. Beautiful colors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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“[T]he thing that really set me off this week,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D‑Missouri) said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “was them going after Sharice Davids.”

The “them” are four freshman congresswomen — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.) — but it was specifically Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, who tweeted: “I don’t believe Sharice is a racist person, but her votes* are showing her to enable a racist system.”

“This is the first Native American woman elected to Congress,” McCaskill exasperatedly explained regarding Rep. Davids. “She is the second openly lesbian member of Congress in history. She represents Kansas, from a district that has been held by the Republicans for cycle after cycle after cycle.… The notion that they’re going after her and playing the race card, what are they thinking?”

Perhaps they’re thinking that the race card has worked quite well before.

And isn’t McCaskill tossing out her own “Native American woman” card? Not to mention suggesting that Rep. Davids’ sexual orientation is yet another trump suit, making her further immune to criticism.

Which seems both profoundly racist and sexist.

This comes on top of a wargame of words between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and freshman Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who, after being belittled by Pelosi on 60 Minutes, charged that the Speaker was “singling out … newly elected women of color.”

Perhaps there is another reason as well for this political fixation on race, gender, sexual orientation: the content of their … character?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The issue at hand was emergency legislation to increase border funding for detainees at the infamous “concentration camps” (as AOC called them) for people caught illegally crossing the southern border of the U.S. The “them” voted against the funding.