This is an ABC podcast.

A few years ago, Dr. Tony Sturdivant was looking for a preschool for her three-year-old

daughter. After considering a number of schools around the Texas suburbs she lived in, she

thought she'd found the perfect place. I fell in love with this beautiful school on acres of land with mature

trees and green grass and whatever. And so I said, this is where my children would go.

There was just one issue. My children were the only black children with two black parents

that attended the school. And the materials in the school weren't very diverse either,

and they weren't talking about diversity or race or anything like that.

If you're thinking that's not that big a deal,

Tony didn't think it would be a problem either to begin with.

It did become a problem, though, just a few months later,

when her daughter,

we'll call her Lisa, came home one day and said something that really worried Tony.

My child said to me that she didn't like her dark skin, to which I replied, I like it,

and she said, well, you can have it.

That crushed me, not just because, you know, this is my daughter and I don't want her

to not love her skin color, but also because I knew that I had taken steps in my home

to create an environment that wouldn't lead to her feeling this way.

I and my husband were very intentional about having dolls and books and posters that sort of

celebrated who she was. And so it caught me off guard that she, at three,

would say that.

And she also said that she wished that she had blue eyes.

...