My Black Ninja and His Sisters

I want to show you a very poor quality picture of one of the good photos I got taken this evening at the mall with the youngest five kiddos. 

 

My point in showing it is so you can visualize the children I had with me - four  little African daughters and one little home-grown  son. We had the nicest photographer, an African American who was from New York - he said one of his parents was from England and the other from Jamaica. Since I had an adoption t-shirt on, the first thing he asked when he walked over to us was if we adopted them all at the same time. I then told him that the four girls were three separate adoptions from two different countries. He was interested in a few details. Upon leading our group back to take pictures, he asked if I'd prefer the black or white back-ground. Elijah piped up right away and said, "let's go with white, it's more American." Since I knew he was referring to red, white and blue being America's colors, it really didn't dawn on me until later how badly that could have been taken. Only minutes later, Elijah said, "I'd rather have the black screen - I am more black that white." At that, the photographer lowered his camera, tried to not laugh and asked, "how's that?" Elijah immediately struck a karate pose and said, "because I'm a black ninja!" (He did wear a black ninja costume just this morning.) I have to say, not one time during the white and black comments, did Elijah ever consider any reference to skin color.

 I think we brightened the photographer's night a little - and we got some good New Year pictures!