- But first I have to share an Instagram page
I'm obsessed with.
It's called FroBabies and it features kids of color
exuding joy and generally just being adorable and cute.
It's the grandchild of preschool teacher, Kanika
who's on the line right now.
Hey what's up Kanika, how are you doing?
- I am doing absolutely amazing.
How are you?
- I'm, I'm doing alright.
I'm hanging in there.
Um so, um
I just had to ask you, like,
how did you come up with this whole thing?
- Well, I'm a preschool autism teacher.
I've been teaching children with special needs
for the past 16 years
and so I had to do my back to school night,
you know,
what's it called,
Power Point presentation.
That thing.
And so I googled the word, beautiful kids,
and every face was white.
Every single face.
So, I searched and I searched and I searched
and there were no black or brown children.
So I decided to curate my own digital space
which is now known as FroBabies.
And, you know,
FroBabies is now the largest social media network,
dedicated to celebrating children of color.
You know, it's important
that black children are appropriately represented
and brown faces are appropriately represented.
- I mean, every kid likes to see a doll that looks like them
or every kid likes to see, you know, that I,
that's so important.
- It's like, it's basic.
It's super basic.
And it wasn't there.
So, you know, the, I couldn't find it in the Google Search,
so FroBabies stepped up
and we're filling in the gap
and um, we got video's and pictures that go viral.
- Speaking of video's that go viral,
you recently actually posted a video
of a little girl in a swimming pool, that went viral,
and I love this video.
But for people that haven't seen it, I mean,
tell us about what's happening.
- So, there's a little girl,
and that she's sitting on the edge of the pool.
She's got her feet in the pool.
She's in swim class with these two little boys.
And the teacher decides to get them acclimated
to the feeling and sensation of water slowly,
so she pours water on their heads.
In practice, right?
So she pours water on the two little boys' heads
and you know, they take it like champs.
When they get to Emma, and she's like...
- [Kelly] No.
- No Mam. Damn. That's not what we're gonna do here.
Let's (buffer).
That's not what we're gonna do.
Emma gets up and runs,
because, I don't know if you're familiar and that,
but black women's most, we don't play about our hair.
- Yeah, like, nah I'm not getting my hair wet.
- We're not doing that.
Like we are (buffering)
So, Emma got up and ran. You know.
- It is so funny and so innate.
She was like, she, she goes,
"oh and that cup is coming my way... no"
- [Kanika] "We aint doing that, yeah, we aint,
we don't play about our hair now."
That's like a thing.
- Alright, well we have that specific little girl,
Emma, Mom Michaela and dad Emmanuel,
zooming in right now.
What's up family?
(family greeting)
Hi, oh my god, what's up Emmanuel.
Nice to see you.
- Nice to see you too, hi.
- I think we just only allowed
extremely attractive people on the show today.
Good lord.
(laughing)
Everybody is so pretty and handsome.
Okay.
Well okay, so we were just actually talking.
I was telling about how Emma is hilarious in that video.
She was like, you're not going near my hair.
And, I mean, Michaela, were you surprised
when you're daughter, Emma, reacted to the water like that?
Had she, was she always like that?
Or was that rare?
- No, she's always like that.
She does not want anyone to wet her hair.
I mean, it's really even a struggle to wash it every night.
You don't want to wet your hair?
No.
- That's right.
- She's like, no, can he, just like no.
So, Emma, do you like swimming?
- Yeah.
- Yeah me too.
I don't like to get my hair wet either.
Like, I just don't like it,
cause I don't like to be cold and wet when I get out.
So, (laughing)
but,
well thank you all so much.
I mean, Kanika, what a great thing you've done
with FroBabies, especially with representation a place
where kids can go, mom's can go and parents can go,
just to show like, you know what I'm saying,
everybody is represented and everybody sees themself
and until you see yourself, you know, projected somewhere,
you don't have that hope of getting there.
So, I think it's really important that what you're doing
and thank you all, thank you all so much for joining us
today and to an amazing story
and it's so cute.
- Thank you so much Kelly.
- [Kanika] Thank you so much for having us.
- All right, well good luck to everybody.
Y'all stay safe and healthy all right?