Why Sugar Land Now Thinks We Are Racist

Today on the way to Jack's day camp at the YMCA he started telling me this LONG made up story about the movie Wall-E that is coming out soon. We started talking about this in the first place because he is deathly afraid of movie theaters in general. I asked him why he was scared of them and he said, "because they are too dark and loud and the movies are too scary." After we talked about this for a while with no mention of any movie, he said, "Mommy, you know that rol-o-bot [robot for you all who don't speak preschooler] movie we saw on TV at Nana's house? That movie is already over at all the theaters anyway." Good try, kid, but I don't buy it.

That is why he then started telling me a story about this "Wall-E" rol-o-bot and why he was too scary. This story lasted about 15 minutes straight and involved a lot of chasing and getting and shooting and running. The problem here is that the other character that was running and chasing and fighting Wall-E in his version was called "the black man." Now, under no circumstance does Jack mean that to mean an African-American man. He means it like you would say a red bowl or a pink shoe. Just a color to him. This only becomes a problem because this story continues LOUDLY as we walk in the door to a very
busy and very multi-ethnic YMCA.

We walk in through a group of about 10 teenagers of all shades of color. Jack continues...

"Then the BLACK MAN ran up to him and sat him down in the grey chair. Then the rol-o-bot tries to get away and the BLACK man won't let him. He chases him down and down the street and they run faster and faster. The BLACK MAN grabs him and fights him..."

To which I respond, "OOOOOOOOKay Jack, that was a good story!!"

He looks at me quizzically for about one second, then continues totally unfazed just as we are about to pass a lone African-American 14 year old girl...

"and the Rol-o-bot cannot get away and he is very scared of that BLACK MAN. He knows he is dangerous! He falls down on the floor..."

You get the idea. As you can imagine, I am getting all kinds of looks from everyone we pass. Still, I could not for the life of me come up with any reason to tell him that we shouldn't say BLACK MAN so loudly outside. If I had told him it was a bad word, he wouldn't have known why, plus that isn't even true. If I had told him it was not socially acceptable, he would have just stared at me. So, I just took it, and the resulting stares.

Let's hope he's forgotten about it when I pick him up. I was really wanting to tell his teacher, "If he starts telling you about the black man, I promise he is not being racist, he just has no idea."