A Misunderstanding About Color

The siblings who live across the street were over in our driveway playing with Kayla and Lucas.

At one point someone got out a soccer ball and they started kicking it across the driveway. Then they decided to form teams. Or as much of a team as you can make with 4 kids.

Lucas stood on one side of the driveway with the ball and excitedly called out to the other boy, T, "You're black! You're on my team!"

T, a 4th grader, who was on his way over to Lucas, paused in his tracks. As he stood there I could see the confusion on his face. I could see him mentally trying to work out why the color of his skin meant he was on Lucas's team.

I was 99.99% sure that Lucas didn't mean it that way. That he wasn't calling T black and saying that was why he was on his team. But I was trying to figure out Lucas-speak and what point he was trying to make in determining the 'teams.'

Lucas, oblivious to his use of color and pronoun, again called out to T, "C'mon - you're black! You're with me on the black team!"


Then the light bulb went off and I quickly reassured T by explaining what Lucas meant.

"Your shirt! Your shirt is black and so is his. You're both wearing black shirts so you're on the same team!" Whew! Glad to clear that up!


Lucas confirmed by saying, "Yeah! And Kayla and T (T's sister is also T) are red! (They both happened to be wearing red on their shirts). They're on the red team...on the red team is the bad team!"

Just to make sure Lucas didn't slip-up with any more references of one color being bad, innocent as he is, I made sure to tell him, "Red doesn't mean bad. They aren't the bad team. They're just the opposing team. They are your opponents, but the color of their team isn't bad." Wouldn't want him to say something and have it taken the wrong way.