It was traumatic to be a child of color and to have white people constantly make negative comments about my hair.
I'm indigenous and have pale coloring in a way that makes people assume I'm white, especially since I was raised by white relatives. As a child, white girls always asked to play with my hair but then lost interest as soon as they touched it and found it had a different texture than theirs. Like, I remember being asked what was wrong with me.
I vaguely understood that my Black friends had different hair textures than my white friends but I knew I wasn't Black. So I literally thought that my body had this weird flaw and that I was the only person in the world who had hair like mine.
If you're white and have a child of color (especially if you live in a white area), please teach them about what makes them different from others! They're going to find out on their own anyway.
