A few years back, one of my hipper students cracked up a lecture when I started sketching a diagram using colored chalks. “Oooh, DIVERSITY CHALK!” she quipped, and the entire class–Black, Anglo, and (mainly) Mexicano–convulsed in laughter. Now the joke’s on her, with Crayola’s new line of “Multicultural” markers:
With this product, I think “multicultural” has finally achieved that pinnacle of marketing status, the Cool But Meaningless Adjective, right up there with organic, lemon-fresh, green, easy-open, new-look, and chipotle.
Is it just me, or does it seem a bit insensitive to proclaim all these colors to be washable? Last time I checked, neither Black, White, nor Brown was something we could wash off…
The Random Texan 
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