What can we learn from 5 girls at a 10 year old birthday party? A lot! About half way through the party last night it hit me that these kids were playing together, eating together, talking, getting ready for bed, and just having fun without any thought to what color the other one was. The truth is this is nothing new to my kids seeing as how they have a black father and a white mother so they are certainly used to that idea, but the other kids didn't come from that same background.

I listened and watched their interactions as much as I could all night. They really all talked and played together. They didn't pair off, they didn't argue (and they even had a discussion about politics - why I don't know, but it came up.) They just had fun. I'm not sure the thought of race even crossed their minds, I know it didn't affect the way the got along, or anything they said and that alone was enough to make my heart melt when I realized it.

How do we raise a generation that lives their entire life with this attitude? We as parents do exactly what these parents that brought their children to my house did. We allow them the opportunity and make the effort to purposely extend our children's friendships beyond their own race and allow them the opportunity to form their own ideas. You see this generation is not burdened by what many of our parents or even ourselves experienced with very blatant and public prejudices. That is not to say prejudice doesn't exist but it certainly doesn't exist in the manner it did 20 or 30 years ago and well...the one thing I really believe about this generation is that they have strong opinions and if we provide them opportunities to see people for who they really are( and not who we have thought they were) then they will have the ability and determination to continue the change that began in this country many years ago.

I didn't grow up in a segregated society and thanks to my parents some of my closest friends in school were of a different race than I was. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to have friends that weren't white, so I did. The thing I didn't do was go to their houses or invite them to my birthday parties....I just didn't think about it and I guess it still wasn't a fully accepted thing. But when I gave my daughter the ability to invite whomever she wanted, my heart leaped when I realized they weren't all one race. How did we do this? We provide her with opportunities where she is surrounded by children of all races so that she can form friendships with people regardless of the color of their skin.