Like most parents I know, I try really hard to make sure that my kids don’t judge others by country of origin or race or sexual orientation, or any such thing. Likewise, we as a family expect the world to treat us in kind. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

My daughter, the spunkiest of us, the youngest of us and the one with the darkest features, is now subject to all sorts of comments. A year ago, we could still get away with not acknowledging it. But a three year old is savvy. And this three year old in particular is brilliant, bright, and way too quick for things to pass her by.

I’m sure it’s hard this year for many Mexican American children across the United States. After all, if you so much as say one word in Spanish outside your house you are subject to people thinking you might be an undocumented worker (this has happened to many an extended family member and some of my students). As the country continues scapegoating undocumented immigrants for economic woes, rounding up families, detaining the breadwinners, separating mothers and fathers from their children, it becomes difficult to feel untouched from this.

Still, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of shielding Diego and Paloma of other people’s shortcomings in the departments of empathy, compassion and human dignity.

Not having a TV definitely helps.

But Paloma is beginning to notice. Why is it that when she’s running around at the playground after tumbling in dirt and sand is she a ‘dirty Mexican’ when everyone else is just ‘dirty’?

There’s no way to respond to those kinds of observations without coloring how your child sees the world and its inhabitants. ‘Because those kids don’t know any better, that’s why they call names.’ That seems insufficient.

“Are we Mexican?” She wants to know. And already at three I can tell in her voice that she knows that to be Mexican in the United States is to be something different , feared and misunderstood.

“Sort of,” I say.

“You guys are ¾ Mexican-American. You and your brother. Mommy is ½. Papa is 100%.” But that is just the pie-chart explanation. In that three-fourths is: Spanish, Yaqui, Jewish, Mayan. That’s not going to help the definition either.

“Other people care about this sort of thing more than your Papa and I do. It doesn’t matter what you are or what we are. But being Mexican isn’t a bad thing at all.”

“Really?”
“Really.”

She is too young for my whole explanation. But one day she might notice that her parents have collected a good deal of art and literature and music and folk artifacts that might demonstrate to her that being Mexican-American goes beyond the media stereotypes of low wage jobs, crime and babies. One day she might notice that most of the Mexican-Americans she is related to and our extended family and friends are artists, professionals, college graduates etc. One day she might notice that her parents befriend immigrants and advocates for them. One day she'll realize her great-grandfather, my grandfather was a gardener who worked from his teens to his eighties. That there's nothing shameful about getting your hands dirty in doing honest work. That her mother teaches with the sole purpose of making sure kids like her get an equal shot at American life. I hope she does.

But for now? I’m a little depressed to have to face prejudice with her head on at such an early age. I don’t honestly know what one should tell a three year old about prejudice. I know what I want to say. I know what it makes me want to do. I think of Dorothy's Aunt Em in the Wizard of Oz telling Myra Gulch, the soon to be Wicked Witch of the West, "for twenty-two years I've held my tongue and now? Being a Christian woman, I can't say it." Amen, sister.

Segue.

This week I endured conversations in the café in town where I was minding my own business, head down editing a story when the old guard of the café launched into attacks of Obama solely on the basis of race. The only thing that made me feel better is knowing that my kids were in school and didn’t learn the N-word that day.

Our state of California has Prop 8 on the ballot—a measure designed inherently to discriminate. I put a no on Prop 8 sign in our front window and had to explain to my kids what I was doing. “There’s an election and mommy and papa believe that all people should be equal in the eyes of the law, but some people don’t think so.” That’s not adequate either. And that’s not something they’d understand. But if I phrased it so they could understand? “Your grandmas got married this summer and 50% of the people of the state we are living in thinks it’s wrong and they want to hurt us.” I’m pretty sure that would make them cry. It’s been making me cry.

How do you tackle these days, when so much fear of the other reaches across our very playgrounds, grocery stores, churches and homes? Why, with all the other early lessons of childhood, must our children learn about hatred too?