WEBVTT

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"Kin."

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"A Black boy in the
fourth grade said to me,

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I'd like to be your son.

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A white boy sitting
near him responded,

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You could never be her son.

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Why not?

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I asked.

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Because he's Black.

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But I'm Black too.

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He looked at me,
his eyes swimming

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with pain and confusion.

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It occurred to me
that white children

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might have a more difficult time
forming a concept of kinship

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to people of different
colors than Black children.

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Black children
grow up in families

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where there is every conceivable
color, texture of hair,

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thickness of feature.

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In white families, there's
much less variation.

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I decided to test this.

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I asked the children,
How many in here

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have people in their family
that are all different colors?

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Some people as light as I am,
some people as dark as Sheldon?

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All the Black kids
raise their hands.

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How many in here have
people in their family

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that are all just about
the same color as you are?

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All the white children
raise their hands.

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Schools with predominantly
white children

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want to teach the concept
of the human family

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by including pictures of
Black people in the textbooks.

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But if valuing the
other, learning

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we are all of the
same blood, is not

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a lesson one learns with
the mind, but with the body.

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The way we first learn love
is by physical closeness.

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I remember sleeping
over my best friend

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Amanda's when we were 10 or 11.

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We kicked her older
sister out of the bed

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and talked far into the night.

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Summer nights I
remember most, we

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would swing open the large
door of the screened window.

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Sometimes the moon
would be out there

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with its shattering white grin.

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We would lie at
the foot of the bed

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in a puddle of brightness,
her skin shown like silver as

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if a kind of luminous
breath poured out of her.

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She would soon go to sleep,
but I would stay awake

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for hours, exuberant.

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Already I had sensed the
darkness beyond the window,

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beyond the moonlight,
and I was comforted.

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I was not alone."

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