Kaleea, the song "Some Children See Him" brought tears to my eyes. It is lovely.

In graduate school I dated a Chinese guy from Hong Kong. One day he placed his forearm next to mine and said, "Oh, I see why they call our skin yellow." It was much yellower than my pink-tan-English-Welsh-Italian-and-a-bit-of-Cherokee skin.

... He also said, "I see why they called you ghosts." ["Foreign devils" is the usual translation.] In China, ghosts were white, and I believe white was the color of mourning.

Azizi, your comments about skin and hair color brought back a lot of memories. Two of my African-American friends, in the 70's, were sharing reminiscences of being discriminated against -- in their segregated elementary schools, by African-American teachers, this was before integration -- because of their dark skin. One said, "Well, sometimes the teachers liked me anyway, because I had 'good hair.'" She made it clear that it was because her hair was straighter (straihtened?) and more like a white person's. By the time I knew her she wore it in an Afro.