Multicultural Canada or just "regular" people.

Today Benjamin came home from school to announce that his good friend is adopted. This to my absolute astonishment as she is, after all, African-American and her mother is as caucasian as they come. At first I thought he was joking, so I ask "Are you seriously surprised?" Yes, he is serious. "You mean you did not know?" and he says; "Of course not she looks JUST like her mother" Now I am even more baffled because I know he is smart: how could he not come up with this conclusion? Then it strikes me, the kid is color blind and I do not mean biological color blindness but social color blindness.

This has happened in the past. Two years ago he came home talking about Charlotte. How Charlotte and him were reading Harry Potter and she was a great reader. So we had a week of Charlotte did this and Charlotte did that. I of course had no idea who Charlotte was so I asked him to describe her to me, this way I could narrow the girls in his class down and hopefully figure out who this wonderful Charlotte was. His answer: "I don't know, she has dark hair" Ok, dark hair now I can eliminate 5 or 6 girls but I am still not even close. So I ask; "What color are her eyes?" and he answers "Who knows". No amount of questions could narrow the field down. A few weeks later I go to get him from school and he bounds up to me with this beautiful little Korean girl by his side - the famous Charlotte. In the car I ask "Hey why didn't you tell me Charlotte was Korean, that would have made it a lot easier for me to know who she was?" and he says "I didn't know she was Korean, she is just regular, you know, like everyone else."

Oh Canada! Our home and native land! Muticulturalism at it's best !!! And even better children don't even KNOW we are multicultural or at least they don't in the early years. To them or at least to mine everyone is just "regular" people. Isn't this great? Is this the generation that finally gets it right?

It reminds me of the time when we were in Church the very week that same sex marriage was approved in Canada and there is Father Paul at the pulpit talking about how we as catholics probably all have friends who are gay and how we must be confused about how to think of this same sex marriage decision and how confusing it must be to be congruent with our faith and it's beliefs but still be accepting. How catholic faith teaches compassion yet we are not being compassionate to people who are gay with our beliefs and on and on and on he went ..... confusion this and confusion that. As we leave the church Sebastian, who at the time must have been no more than 5 says to me: "So Mama, isn't same sex marriage when a boy marries a boy or a girl marries a girl." And I answer "Yes it is" and he says: "So I don't get it, WHY is Father Paul so confused?!" Yep! this kind of insight and wisdom at age five!!!

So as I see Sebastian head out tonight in a group of teenagers made up of one boy whose mother is Sri-Lankan and father is Argentinian, another whose parents are Chinese, another whose parents come from South Africa, another with an Peruvian father and Scottish mother and him, my Sebastian, Canadian father, Mexican mother I smile to myself and say Benjamin is right ---- just regular people.