(96) Skin color

My cousin's daughter brought her boy friend to meet her family. He is a "Chindian" (what locals call a child between a Chinese and an Indian).

I was listening to my great aunt, she was reacting to the whole thing rather well. Apart from the fact that the prospective member of the family is not as tall as she expected, she has no other negative comment. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that the future children could be as dark skin as an Indian or as fair as a fair-skin Chinese. True to form, my great aunt said that she may not live long enough to see which end of the scale the skin color of the next generation goes.

That reminded me of a program I just watched call Exciting Europe. An ethnic African European brought the viewers to see how African immigrants or the second generation fare in Europe. Of course I expect a certain amount of racism. But I did not expect to see the photos of hundreds of Africans that were murdered in hate crimes. What I like about the program are the bi-racial marriages. Quite a few couples of African men and white women were interviewed. Most of them admitted that they have had many differences to overcome initially. However, many of them said that love means sharing work, African men have to abandon the notion that their spouses would do all the work while they sat around twiddling their thumbs.

While no one can really claim that he or she has no prejudices, it helps to remember that skin color is only skin deep. Inside us, we are all human and no higher or lower than one another.