Tall Enough: Inter-racial Love.

I just heard the most baffling thing from my cousin... And she's only eight years old.

Here's how it went. A few days ago, I was watching a drama called "Runaway: Plan B" and it starred Rain, my husband. So, she knows that I'd marry Rain in a heartbeat but it wasn't that she said that Asians were weird... It was what she was going to say next that concerned me. She asked, "If you could marry anyone, besides Rain, who would you marry?" and I said, "Usher." and said, "(gasp)... Why?! He's black!" and I was like, "What's the matter with being black?" and she told me, "It's not good." it concerned me but I really wanted to punch her in the face even if she was eight.

But get this.

Just now, my aunt and I were talking and she told me that her father is going to pick her up so they can hang out and my cousin said, "I don't want to go!" and we asked her why and she replied, "I don't want to ride the bus!" and I asked her, "What's wrong with riding the bus? It's fun." and she said, "Fun? Hellooooooo, there's black people on the bus! I don't want to ride with black people!"

I'm going to be honest, my heart sank, my jaw dropped and I teared up. I said, "Hey! That is the most racist thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth!" and she kept quiet. Her mother said, "Yeah, that's racist. Don't you have black friends at school?" and she said, "No, I don't like."

What she also told me once is that she wanted to marry a white man because - Get this - "Because my English got better and I'm not so shy about talking in English." - Yes, those were her words. I'm ashamed to even be around her now...

It was shocking to hear an eight year old say things like that, especially around me. I don't know what she learned in her short two years here in America but what she said was just enough. It really hurt me almost as much as it would have hurt an African American person. To be honest, I feel uncomfortable calling them "black" because I feel like it's still mean. I mean, you don't call Asians 'yellow' or Indians 'brown'.

I ended up having to excuse myself from the table.

Most of my friends are African American, I've had relationships with a few and I have a lot of aunts, uncles and godparents that are the same and none of them are what people think of them as a race are... They are great people, just as great or even greater than anyone else you'd meet. Most of them are welcoming people... It's just some make bad choices but that doesn't mean that all are like that but to see my eight-year-old cousin to say something so poisonous... It made me want to choke her to death because it's those types of people I hate the most.

And just yesterday, I watched a short six-minute clip called "Tall Enough" and I think everyone should be inspired by it. I'm all for inter-racial relationships and I know in the future, we'll all end up being inter-racial so might as well get use to the idea right now.

Here's the clip:

Heartbroken,
Otter