The Terror of Black American Motherhood
In case you were wondering why I haven’t said as much about Jordan Davis as I did about Trayvon Martin? I can’t formulate anything that isn’t blubbering. My son is 13, 5 ft 7 & just over 100lbs. It’s all I can do to let him out of my house alone. Being the mother of a young black man in America is hard frightening work in general, much less when you know that they can be killed for the crime of being black and outside. No one tells you when you give birth to a tiny person like this:
That the day they look like this:
is the day people start reaching for guns & not patience. I’m haunted by the possibility that he won’t come home one day because he scared a white man just by breathing. And the worst part? No one will see the baby that I lost, they’ll be too busy trying to make him a monster to justify his murder.
You have a beautiful son. It would take a really twisted person to look at him and see anything other than a happy 13 year-old kid. I don’t have children, but I can only what it must feel like to know that those twisted people are out there and that they are plentiful.
Your article is on target. Though we as mothers share similar joys and trials with women throughout the world, being a black mother presents its own unique challenges. Institutional racism prevails. As black mothers the list of worries is endless: How will my child be treated at school by both nonblack teachers and their nonwhite classmates. How will they interpret the medias portrayal of them. Will they be denied employment opportunities because of the color of their skin or the texture of their hair. I could go on, but you get my drift.