As a small child, I never wondered what black kids thought when they reached into their box of Crayolas and pulled out the “flesh” colored crayon.
How someone in the executive ranks could have possibly been that ignorant as to label a color “flesh,” and then have the company actually produce it, is beyond today’s comprehension, but it did exist for a time, as well as “Indian red,” and was accepted into our culture – a predominantly White culture.
Back in the 1950’s, coloring books were basically marketed for White folks. We had Roy Rogers, Howdy Doody and other prominent television idols, drawn into a book that we could use our crayons to color. There were not too many visual references to people of color, so we mostly had so-called Caucasian images and, of course, with the Western books, Indians! We needed an appropriate colored crayon to help us in our quest for cartoon realism.
Although we had colors like Burnt Umber, Peach and Olive, my guess is someone decided to make it clearer for us white kids, without giving any thought to the effects on children of color who might also enjoy coloring in the book, to include “Indian red” and “Flesh,” as a way of guiding us in our creativity. Of course, if the image was a person of color, we could simply use brown, black or chestnut hues to fill in the image. They didn’t market “Negro Black or Brown” crayons.
But the fad was not limited to crayons. There were also flesh colored bandages which appeared, again having sort of a peachy/cream color. Unfortunately, if you were a person of color, the bandage didn’t really blend in to your skin tone. As a matter of fact, it didn’t blend into mine either, although it was better than the pure white bandages that preceded the toned ones.
At the time, it didn’t disturb me because we were growing up in an age of ignorance and what we now call White Privilege. And the companies that marketed the flesh colored items failed to realize that flesh is not a color – unless you happen to be racist.
