What color is beautiful?

Lost of my kindergarten students have already been picked up by their parents. Two children still sit on the mat in the cafeteria lobby, waiting. Occasionally, one of them stands to look through the door's opaque windows to see if he can make out a parent coming.

Ernesto, the darkest child in my class, unexpectedly says in Spanish, "Maestro, my mom is giving me pills to tum me white."

"Is that right?" I respond, also in Spanish. "And why do you want to be white?"

"Because I don't like my color." he says.

"I think your color is very beautiful, and you are beautiful as well," I say.

I try to conceal how his comment saddens and alarms me, because I want to encourage his sharing.

"I don't like to be dark," he explains.

His mother, who is slightly darker than he, walks in the door. Ernesto rushes to take her hand and leaves for home.

White privilege is a value deeply ingrained in our social fabic. "Oh ook at him, how pretty and...