If there were ever two girls I wanted to smack upside the head, these would be the ones.

The Internet is crazy.

The other day a couple of little girls from a high school not too far from here posted a video on the Internet that was truly sad.  You can watch it yourself if you'd like to, just like I did (unless the video is deleted again because it violates hate speech policies). 

But I'll give you a recap to save you the trouble.

Two ignorant white suburban girls go on a diatribe about how everyone at their high school is black, how they have real hair and black girls have weaves, and how the white people at their school speak like black people (while they do imitations).  The girls appear to be about 14 or 15 and clearly have no clue what sort of negative impact their statements are going to have.

And people are mad - understandably so. The stupid little girls in this video even say to the black people watching their video "Please be offended, because we are making fun of you."

I couldn't bring myself to be mad, though. Watching this video broke my heart. I was instantly sad that these girls thought it would be funny to make a video like this and post it. I feel terribly for everyone affected by it. Not just the people the video addresses, but the girls themselves. Because one day they will grow up and they'll realize how much impact words can have on other people.

But today they're just ignorant little girls who don't think past what they're going to wear tomorrow. Obviously they weren't thinking when they posted this. "Don't post this on facebook because all our friends are black." Not for long, bitches, not for long.

The saddest thing is that there are little girls all over the country, maybe all over the world, that are thinking just like this and acting just like this.  Most of them evidently have enough foresight not to record themselves and post videos, but that doesn't change the fact that there are tons of them.

I hope these girls have parents who are striking down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger (Pulp Fiction reference, check). I hope their parents are feeling waves of shock, mortification, and disappointment - because somewhere along the way they failed those girls.  They forgot to teach them that words can never really be taken back. They neglected to teach them that being different is good, that we need diversity and open minds for our world to keep improving. They never took the time to show those girls the value of stepping outside of their little box and really looking at the world around them.

I hope these little girls are learning that what they've done is gross and sad. I hope they're beginning to understand that, as they brush their real hair and show off their skinny little bodies, they're only showing how incredibly ugly they are. And if they don't understand that now - I can only hope that they will one day soon.

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.