{"id":1513,"date":"2021-04-10T23:46:31","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T09:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2021-04-11T15:17:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T01:17:53","slug":"choon-james-understanding-begins-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=1513","title":{"rendered":"Choon James: Understanding Begins With Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"743\" height=\"996\" src=\"https:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Screen-Shot-2021-04-11-at-2.55.04-PM.png\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"1519\" data-link=\"https:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?attachment_id=1519\" class=\"wp-image-1519\" srcset=\"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Screen-Shot-2021-04-11-at-2.55.04-PM.png 743w, http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Screen-Shot-2021-04-11-at-2.55.04-PM-336x450.png 336w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 743px) 100vw, 743px\" \/><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I was a young mother with a 2-year-old boy living at Wymount Terrace on the BYU Provo campus in Utah. I was doing laundry with Robbie when a tall dark man walked into the laundry room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know what his nationality was. He could have been a black-American citizen or a &#8220;foreigner&#8221;. But he did have a particularly dark pigment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Robbie saw him, his quick response was to point to him and said loudly, &#8220;Mom, what is <strong>that<\/strong>?&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was awkward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I immediately told Robbie that he was our friend who had a darker skin than us. I said it loud enough so our visitor could hear it.  Our new friend and I smiled at each other .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our kind visitor understood a child. He did not get offended. He did not get angry. He did not blame me for my child&#8217;s actions.  He did not start lecturing me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think about that incident once in a while. Someone who had no exposure to a black person could naturally react the way he did.  I appreciate that good man with a kind understanding nature. It makes life less complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was a young mother with a 2-year-old boy living at Wymount Terrace on the BYU Provo campus in Utah. I was doing laundry with Robbie when a tall dark man walked into the laundry room. I don&#8217;t know what his nationality was. He could have been a black-American citizen or a &#8220;foreigner&#8221;. But he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[364,2,365,357,361,359],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-equity","tag-hawaii","tag-humanity","tag-justice","tag-peace","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1521,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions\/1521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}