One of the greatest gifts my parents gave was to learn to love someone regardless of color, religion and money. This way, I had a black baby as a toy, my sister has a black Barbie equivalent (Suzi). The first close friend I can remember was an Indian girl named Anupama.
As we grew up, we had friends that were not as privileged as us, that had different religions and that had different colors too. We never stopped to question, we looked at their hearts instead and chose our friends this way.
It is this very set of beliefs that I have passed onto B.
Last year in Kindergarten she had a friend who was from India, a vegetarian and a non-Christian. She came to tell me that her friend would not eat and meat and she believed in different Gods. I went on to tell her that it was ok to be different and that we had to learn from their differences and be tolerant about them. I also told her that the world would be very boring if we were all the same. We would not learn anything new with the other.
She actually embraced the idea that being different is cool and says that she does not want to be like everybody else, because she wants to lead others! I just hope she will not be that kid that will dye her hair pink!!!!
The incident with the Brazilian player during the international game was the perfect scenario to re-introduce the discussion we once had about being tolerant towards the others and their differences. When she arrived from school I told her about the player and asked if she wanted to take a picture eating a banana. She was fast to agree and the result is the picture above.
In my view, Neymar's campaign is not about ignoring racism, but telling the offenders we don't care what they think because we know we indeed allcame from the monkeys. We are all monkeys, we are all the same! Raising above it and not exacerbating the difference is in my view a lot more effective.
