And the children shall lead us

When you have an extremely active 20 month old boy in the home, and your home is a sub-900 square foot condo with no private yard and a 10-foot communal patch of grass, you tend to go out a lot. To parks when it's sunny, and to indoor play areas when it isn't. Since we live in the Seattle area, we spend a lot of time at indoor play areas. For us, the closest (free) indoor play area is at the local mall.

The local mall has a pretty diverse population. A lot of Asian families, a fair number of black families, etc. What's really striking is to watch all the kids play together. It's a good reminder that little kids don't see skin color, just other kids to play with.

I think that's the way I grew up. Racism was, to me, an intellectual concept, one more entry in the list of stupid ideas that some people believe.

Then I went to college, and found out that not only do these idiots still exist, sometimes they go to college and become educated idiots.

And sometimes, when I see my little son running around the play area, shrieking with delight and being chased by a little boy with skin of a different color, following a little girl of another ethnicity, I remember some of the conversations I had with the educated idiots I once shared a dorm room with. And I wonder how anyone can see skin color and think that it matters, if they've ever seen little children at play.