Everyone's Skin is the Same!

Focusing in on one aspect of Prophet Adam (AS)'s story, I wanted the girls to understand  that everyone is essentially the same colour when it comes to their skin, we're all just a variety of different shades... Without mentioning the word "racism" at all, but sowing the seeds of understanding there.

So we recapped the part of the story of when Allah created Adam (AS) by collecting mud/clay from all over the Earth and went on to discuss how the climates differ around the world and how everyone looks different, i.e. hair colour, eye colour and skin colour... So we all look different, but how do we all look the same? I told them that essentially, everyone in the world is just different shades of brown. They laughed at this. 😂 Then we got the paints out (tell me which colours mix to make brown? And which colours can we use to make that brown darker or lighter?) and mixed a brown into the centre of one of the palletes. Then with their own separate mixing palletes, they had a go mixing different amounts of the starting brown with different amounts of black/white/red/green/yellow/blue to see which different shades they could make. With each different brown they made, they painted a circle, i.e. a face, on a sheet of plain A4 card.

This is essentially the basics of understanding melanin! They tried their best to paint someone Caucasian but found it hard to limit the amount of brown on their brushes... In the end one commented, "It's hard to get it light enough so they must only have a tiny little bit of brown in their skin!" 👌

Then they painted hair on their people and we talked about the different colours of natural hair in the world.

In the end, people are all people no matter how they look like! And in the end, it's our actions which are the most important, not what we look like anyway. 👍