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There is ‘brown’....seriously.

This has been a long time ago as my grandson is driving now, but when he was five or six, we went to a restaurant for dinner. I had wanted to get closer to him verbally, so I tried to have a nice conversation, since he sat next to me.

I asked him about school and his friends. He mentioned someone named ‘Miguel’, well, I wasn’t up on Hispanic or black names at the time. So I asked “Oh is he black?”. My grandson said “NO, He’s brown.” Being the clueless on elementary new speak, or what was taught in school, I thought they didn’t want to be called black.

So I asked “Oh, he’s African-American?” My grandson looked frustrated and said “NO, he wasn’t born in Africa, he was born here.” “So, he isn’t black?” I asked. “NO, HE”S BROWN!” I gave up at that point.

Eventually, I realized ‘Brown’ meant Mexican, but the local elementary schools were making the students call them ‘brown’ and they were not allowed to say Mexican or Hispanic. I found that out when I spoke with his other grandmother who was an elementary teacher. She was insulted I did not know, since I was a community college instructor at the time.

Funny, how names change over the years and people pick new ones to be identified with, and it gets confusing. That issue had not come up for me before the dinner. Maybe they should send out notices or post it in the paper.

So yes, we have another color, brown. Yet we are not allowed to call the Native-Americans, red.

Oy Vey.