fighting over Rosa Parks

These twins play. They also fight. Today they were outside in unseasonably warm weather doing both. I knew that the graphic biography we'd read last night about the life and grit of Rosa Parks had interested them, but still it surprised me when I heard the screaming and yelling drifting through the open back door:

"I ROSA PARKS.... NO. I ROSA PARKS!...NO YOU NOT! I ROSA PARKS!... NO! YOU NOT ROSA PARKS. YOU CAN'T BE ROSA PARKS! Ahhhhhhya ROSA PAAAAAARKS!!!" 

I looked outside to see that they had set up the school bus tent with a small stepladder inside and were fighting over which of them got to stand at the top and wave a stick in the air and declare their identification with the admired activist. At the moment I took this in, Orson was atop the ladder doing a very good impression of Ms. Parks' stubborn refusal to budge from her seat and Zephyr was trying her best to push him off. It was a very serious situation to them, and they seemed puzzled by my laughter as I intervened to avert injury. In the aftermath, as they settled down and resumed taking turns practicing stubborn boldness on the coveted perch, I sat on the grass and shot this briefly harmonious photograph. 

I can see that these two white, comfortable and young children don't understand the complexities of race and the civil rights movement at this age. Absent any but the most vague sense of its deep social/cultural/economic histories, racial difference is largely just optics to them. Children's books that simplify these complex topics are only ever comprehended against the backdrop of their very limited experience in the world, and it is hard enough right now to get them to fully grasp the concept of tomorrow let alone a construct like race.  But it occurs to me as I watch them play that these two really are at a perfect age to grasp the basic principals of Parks' activism.  The twins are already scarily adept at  fighting for their rights and comprehending wrongs. Their sense of fairness is so honed it often drives me nuts, as does their staunch refusal to follow any rules they deem insensible. Indeed, their truly unadulterated grasp of our common humanity seems the perfect foundation for understanding the crime of oppression. As I watch this made-up game I see two people honing skills that hopefully will help them better participate in the wide world their brains are steadily and increasingly taking in.