Why is your skin brown?

We knew that when we adopted Firefly, who is African American, we were beginning an exciting yet challenging journey. I knew it would provide some unique challenges for our son, Puppy, who is now a high energy 3 year old.

Since the town that we live in is only 1% African American, we have been hard pressed to find opportunities where Firefly was not the minority. My hope is that throughout her life, she will see that her parents have close friends who look like her, their are professionals in key roles like teacher, pediatrician, dentist, etc. who look like her, and that in different social circles in which we operate, there are large groups of people who look like her. We are going to try to do that were we live, but if we can't we are going to have to move.

So we've frequented an African American church in town over the last couple of months, and have been warmly received by the congregation. There is no child care during the sermon so the kids just bring their toys and coloring books and keep themselves occupied while the adults sing passionately and vociferously follow the preachers sermon.

Puppy brought his trains and was doing a somewhat decent job of sharing with the kids sitting next to us, when he touched the for-arm of a little girl and said, "Why is your skin brown?"

I was mortified. We were surrounded by people of color and I had no idea how they would feel about Puppy asking this question. The girl had much darker skin then Firefly, so I began to wonder if he even saw her skin color as different than his?

When we went to go "potty" half way through the sermon I tried to get him to talk about it. I asked him about his skin, and launched in to a highly persuasive and informative talk about how we get our skin color from our birth parents and that all people skin are different shades of brown, his was just a very light brown, kind of a peachy color. He latched on to the idea of peachy skin, bounced down the hallway and stopped listening to me when he got excited about standing up to go potty. The toilet at home is to large for this purpose while the urinal at church stretches all the way to the ground. Very exciting for a newly potty trained 3 year old.

Realizing I know longer had his interest or ear, I reflected on all the reasons he would ask this question and what he was trying to figure out. So what do you all think? If your kid asked this question, what would you say? I'm looking forward to reading your ideas.

Thanks in advance.