Mom, you won’t believe this… a kid at school didn’t know who Nelson Mandela was…

Me:        Hey baby, I missed you.

Son:       Why? (Looking at me quizzically.)

Me:        I had a productive day and just looked at the clock and knew you were on the way home.

Son:       Oh, ok.  Come give your baby boy a hug.  (I humbly obliged.)

Mom, you won’t believe this… a kid at school didn’t know who Nelson Mandela was…

Me:        Wow.  Well, was the kid white?

Son:       Yeah.  That would really be shame if he was black.

Me:        Was he in your class?

Son:       Yeah. He was the only kid in class that didn’t know about him.  I don’t know why he asked in science, but, uh, he’s really smart.  One of the smartest kids in the class.  That’s why I was so shocked. 

Me:        What did the teacher say?

Son:       That Nelson Mandela was the Martin Luther King of South Africa.

Me:        Good analogy.

Son:       They both fought for peace and equal rights and they both went to jail for it.  But what I don’t get is how white people can just go and take someone’s land.  Black people lived there and white people just came and took it.

Me:        Not only that, but some of those Africans were brought here to slave for the land that the settlers took from the Indians. 

Son:       Wow.

I don’t know why I automatically assumed that the student was white.  I guess because maybe I know that certain history topics were skipped when I went to school, and that a lot of black history I learned was from my family.

The interesting thing to me is that my son and I both spoke with no malice, no content, just the sad true reality, and then he got the leash to walk his dog.