Living in the Fabric of Faithfulness

The following is an excerpt from our forthcoming book, Living in the Fabric of Faithfulness (Julia Stronks and Gloria Stronks).

I was in Amsterdam visiting an elementary school that had many children of color whose parents or grandparents had come to the Netherlands from Surinam, Morocco, or Turkey. The principal took me around first of all to the pre-school class and then on to every other classroom. In each classroom the children asked me how old I was. My response was always the same. “In my country it is not considered good manners to ask adults how old they are but I will tell you my age.”

In the sixth grade class, after my standard answer, I asked, “Why do children in this school keep asking how old I am?” There was a great deal of whispering and then a girl said, “You see, Miss, we can tell how old our parents’ friends are. But your skin is a different color and we haven’t learned how to tell how old white people are.” I motioned that they should gather around me, took off my glasses, and showed them that when Caucasian people age they have lines by their eyes, deep smile lines, and sometimes wrinkles between their eyes and on their necks. I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear their enthusiastic, “Oh, yes! Look! We can see that.”