Crayola caves to political correctness

I thought that I was hearing a joke about this when it was talked about during a local AM radio talk show yesterday morning. Crayola had decided to change one of it's colors to avoid confusion. That's right. Appearantly educators felt that young children would confuse the color "Inidan Red" as being the skin color of indians, I mean Native Americans.

Crayola says that the color "Indian Red" was named after the sand color in and around India. This was not intended as a skin color for Indians Native Americans. In order to meet the educators concerns, the color was renamed this week to "Chestnut Red".

Once I realized that this was not a joke, I immediatly had two thoughts. First, if the poor children were confused over "Indian Red", what good is changing the name of the color to "Chestnut Red" going to do? These are appearantly feeble minded children that are old enough to read "Indian Red", but cannot understand that "Indian Red" refers to the color of sand in India. What is going to happen to their poor little minds when they are looking for "Indian Red" in the brand new box of Crayola Crayons, and they can't find it? Now, they have to remember that it was changed to "Chestnut Red".

The second thought to hit my mind my was pretty scary. It couldn't possibly be true, could it? Are the educators who were concerned about the children's confusion not as smart as the crayon they were complaining about? If I were to find either of my children holding a redish brown crayon, and starring at it with a baffled look, I would be inclined to ask what the problem was. After understanding their obvious confusion over the "Indian Red" crayon, I would explain to them what the color was all about.

I would tell them in an instructive manner that the color was not intended to be the skin color of the savage Indians Native Americans of days past, but the color of sand in India. In case there are any educators reading this, I'll say say that in a different way; I would TEACH them. Now why didn't these educators think of that?

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