Why can't we all just identify as flavors? I'm peach, you're banana, and she's chocolate.

We live in the land of the white. Our area is rural... the land of the "good ole boy" and the pick up truck.

And a hotbed of racism.

Seeing a rebel flag flying on the back of a pick up truck or boldly plastered across a tee shirt at the grocery store is a regular occurrence.

Sure, there are a few black families around (African-American? People of Color? What is the politically correct term now?) but not many. My kids go to a primarily white school with primarily white teachers and primarily white kids.

I've tried to raise my children to be color blind. Race is not something that we typically discuss at home. I used to be thrilled when my kids would come home from school talking about someone they met and they'd casually mention that they were brown or caramel colored. They didn't even know the term "black" as applied to people.

I tried not to address racism, hoping that with their generation, those lines would be smudged out in the sand and never drawn again.

So when I took the kids to a park last week that was outside of our area, I thought nothing of the fact that this particular park was in a more, shall we say, ethnically dense populated area. It didn't occur to me that one of my children might have an issue with being a minority.

I'm not going to single out which one of the little goblins had the issue as I sense this being a source of embarrassment to this child and I don't want to mortify this child further.

Two goblins were playing just fine, but the one goblin looked sort of sad.

"I want to leave," said the goblin.

"But don't you want to play?" I asked, seriously confused. The park is always a hit... always.

"There are too many black people here."

I was floored. Shocked. Horrified.

Here I thought I was raising color-blind children, but this one had picked up on a part of human nature I had hoped none of my children ever would. This child saw itself as different and was seriously uncomfortable with it.

I did what any mother would do when their child has just loudly insulted an entire race of people and they are surrounded by those people. I sternly told this child never to say such a thing again, called to my other two children, quickly ushered them to the van, and made a swift escape.

And called a friend on the phone to express my horror.

And my friend laughed and asked me what I expected, raising my kids in the land of the white.

Just this summer, this particular goblin would not have said this. I know, because I took them regularly to the city library and fountains and waterfront areas, where they played happily with kids of every different shape, size, and color. This goblin never blinked an eye. Something has changed in the past 7 months and I'm really unhappy with it.

Obviously the school teaching the goblins about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks during the month of February isn't doing a damn thing to help them identify with the kids at the park in that other neighborhood. And me beating them over the head with racially neutral comments like "there are good people and bad people of every color" isn't helping this particular goblin to feel any better when the goblin obviously feels that being different is a bad thing.

And unfortunately, the issue is so sensitive that no one feels they can talk about it with any sense of realism or productivity. So what does a mom, living in the land of the white, do to help her children see that we're all people and to give everyone a chance without prejudice? I'm still working on that. I'll let you know when I figure it out.