I have a black son.
I have a black son and I am his white mama.
I have a black son who is too young still to know that society
fears him,
mistrusts him,
doubts him,
considers him a threat.
I have a black son and I am his white mama.
It’s personal.
I have a black son.
For now my black son is just adorable, charming, beloved, everyone’s friend.
He trusts because he should,
because he is only three years old.
I have a black son and I look at him and wonder,
When will he change in the eyes of those around him?
When will he begin to look scary, criminal, less capable?
When will his teachers begin to overlook his talents?
When will he be punished for misbehaving, considered deviant, while his white friends
are dismissed for “just acting like children sometimes do?”
When will I have to tell him that he shouldn’t wear the hood of his sweatshirt on his
head?
When will someone cross the street for the first time for fear of him, their heart racing?
What will that do to my son’s heart?
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
I have a black son.
When we filled out the adoption paperwork we were extremely clear that the child who
would join our family did not need to be white.
We knew that he probably wouldn’t be.
We imagined a black son.
We knew – abstractly – that we would be taking on a great responsibility as the white
parents of a black child.
I’ve been asked by both black and white friends,
“What is your plan for preparing your black son for this world?”
What is my plan?
Nobody asked me what my plan was when my white daughter was born 12 years ago.
I didn’t have to have a plan beyond loving her and giving her the world.
But my black son?
I want nothing more than to love him and give him the world.
And I know how brutally that world can be taken from him – in an instant – because of his
gorgeous brown skin.
How do I prepare him for that without taking the world – his promise – from him?
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
I have a black son.
His ancestors came to America on slave ships.
The racism that binds him – something he doesn’t yet know – is systemic and has not
ceased for two and a half centuries.
I have a black son and I have a responsibility to teach him that.
How do I give him that knowledge, that understanding which is his right, without the
promise that things will get better
for his people who are not “my own,” but to whom I am still accountable?
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
I have a black son and he is a lover.
When he was three days old I held his tiny body inside my shirt, brown skin to pinkish to
skin, his head against my heart.
I promised my black son that I would care for him and protect him until my final breath.
I promised him that I would teach him how to be a good man.
How to be a black man.
Can I teach him that as his white mama?
What does it mean to be a black man, now, today?
What will it mean for him when he turns 18?
Will he remain safe – will he remain alive – until then?
Will he get the long, full life that is his right,
His promise?
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
I have a black son and he likes to wrestle, to tackle, to do karate chops, to yell, “Hah-
YAH!”
How will he be seen for that, how will he be judged, as he grows older and becomes “a
threat?”
How will I teach him that, around people in positions of authority, he will need to be
submissive, compliant?
And that even then his safety – his life – is still not guaranteed?
Still not protected?
Still considered by some to be less sacred than mine,
or his sister’s,
or his father’s?
Why should I have to teach him that?
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
Those men, those boys, those women who have been killed for being black,
Whose names are a list we read and reread and speak and call out
to remember,
Those precious lives that matter,
They could be my son.
They are my son.
My son’s life matters.
I have a black son.
It’s personal.
This piece was first published at www.lovebeautyabundance and republished here with the author’s permission.
