To paraphrase a wise observation about the past, childhood is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Whether or not kids attach judgment to their own or others' color is irrelevant, because kids are kids, not little adults who simply haven't had their minds filled with facts or fictions.

I think the evidence - which I can't cite, so if that's enough for you to reject the claim, feel free - shows that racism emerges as we develop, that our genes drive us in an almost immunological way to fear "the other," that color-blindness is outgrown and so, pace Rodgers and Hammerstein, it, not racism, must be carefully taught.

Because racism works for the winners, it is institutionalized, which is why Critical Race Theory is a useful inquiry for adults with fully-formed frontal lobes. But neither CRT, nor any watered-down version of it aimed at sensitizing children to color and its consequences belongs in the lower grades.