All had dark skin.
When the boys came out of Sunday school and showed me their box, their accompanying explanation was that they had to collect money for the brown kids because brown people are poor!!! (This obviously was not what they had been told at church, but rather, a concept they themselves had begun to develop based on the examples in their limited life experience.)
As I tried desparately to think on my feet of the "brown" people in our lives, I realised that in fact most of the ones our family saw with any regularity were in fact poor. Sure, I have friends who are black superintendents, professors and other educational leaders, but my boys are more familiar with a HOM family we live with and who live in poverty, and a single black mom we sometimes deliver meals to.
THE DANGER OF ONE STORY!!!!
I couldn't believe I myself had been guilty of perpetuating it, and with my own children!
Thankfully, some of the "poor" families we volunteer with are also white. And I will need to somehow make sure that our well-to-do friends of colour begin to play a more prominant role in the lives of our children. God help me!