We still have a long way to go

I was at the grocery store today, and ran into a Mr. Mom (okay, it's an assumption, but it was during working hours, and he was with a 2-year old and an infant, and wearing sweats).

I thought "Cool. Society in my neighborhood has evolved to the point where this is acceptable".

Then I heard his two year-old say, "look, Dad, there's a brown man!".

Out of the mouths of babes, right?

I thought we were making progress. I thought we were finally becoming color blind, and that we could accept people for who they are rather than what they look like. I mean, all of the people involved were probably Christians. The stay-at-home Dad and the Brown Man both had the aura of someone who would help others at need, were active in their church, and had given money to hurricane relief.

Yet they were worlds apart. Even in the same grocery store, they were from different worlds.

It wasn't the Brown Man's fault. He wasn't even brown, he was very black, yet he was classified by this toddler as an oddity. And this was in a neighborhood that is fairly integrated.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe the toddler and his family are evacuees from a world where there are no black people. But I was struck by his comment that there are still social circles out there that see anything different than themselves as something to be critical of.

And as long as there are still those attitudes, it reminds me that we still have a long way to go.