In a small town.....

My 10 year old son, JB, has a friend named Josiah. Even though JB and Cate are gone to their dad's for a six week visit, he comes over to visit with Jude. Jude loves him, and asks for him almost every day. Anyway. Josiah is a nice kid. He's the kind of kid that'll show up, and if I'm pulling weeds in the garden or unloading groceries he'll say "Let me help you with that" in a way unusual for ten year old boys. He's really nice, very polite. Today we were sitting on the deck talking like we were BOTH grown ups. One thing we talked about was how some of the kids in our neighborhood get really MEAN to other kids. Especially the girls. We talked about why they were like that (he is 100% sure the parents have made them that way by being that way themselves. smart kid, huh?) He then told me that there's a lot of kids in his school that don't like him because of his color. His mom is white and his dad is black. We live in a very small town. It might be the county seat, but there isn't much here. There's a lot of bars, a lot of churches, and a lot of thrift shops. It's very limited here. I can probably count the number of non-white people I've seen on, well, my two hands. There's not a whole lot of diversity. Without diversity, that whole white-centric thing is sure to happen. It's just the way it is. I told him "Josiah, it really isn't like that everywhere. You know that right?" And he said "Yea. It's just hard to make friends."  My heart breaks for him. I gave him a bowl of strawberries from my garden (he asks for them every time) with some whipped cream, and hoped that that made his day a little better.