Like anyone who has a baby there is so much joy at the beginning. In those early years when they're just cute and nothing else matters. Not money. Not education. Not color. Nothing. Not even gender. There is absolutely no difference between a cute baby girl and an adorable baby boy. That's why you can dress them in clothes that are close to being costumes. It really doesn't even matter what they wear. Nothing can diminish their beauty. It's almost as if they're too beautiful to even be human, they're more akin to jewels which you want to encase and hold, all your own, only for you, forever.
It's not until they go to school, around five years old, that the differences start to come. They need clothes. They start to listen to music. They repeat what's been said. They come into contact with other people's thoughts and cultures. And you find out, when you're the mother of a Black son, that there are expectations of your son which are not applied to any other group. Our sons are not supposed to be smart. They're supposed to be perfectly still at all times. They are never supposed to be hurt or to cry. And if they do there is less consideration for their tears. Once, when my son John II was in the second or third grade, there was a little sitting next to him in the classroom. Some other children, she admitted later, told her to hurt John II. He was one of few Black children in the classroom. So, she tricked him into thinking she liked him. Asked him to sit next to her. Grabbed his fingers and twisted them backwards. John II told the teacher. The teacher told him that he was a boy. The same thing about boys "taking it like a man" when they're physically attacked by girls. The girl, and others, laughed at him. She did it again. John II slapped her face. He got in trouble. Of course there was a meeting in the principals office and this is where all was revealed. "A boy should never hit a girl no matter what." Hopefully, that young lady never tried this experiment on someone who didn't care about being called into the principal's office. I held him in my arms, later, as he cried. This wasn't the first time in his life he had a racial incident. When he was about two I went to his nursery school class while it was in session. I had forgotten to give him something or I had a break at work and took him a treat. The children sitting on either side of him looked at him, looked at me, and they moved away from my son. They realized he was Black. I believe that incident was the first time he cried in my arms over skin color.
All through the years there were incidents. Once, my other son was with a group of friends and they were picking on another boy. Somehow the story went from picking on him to he had been robbed at knife point. My son was named as one of the robbers. He was taken out of school in the 9th grade. Later (and it always comes later) the boy admitted that he made it up. He had been goaded into the scheme by a couple of other boys. And, telling his parents, he had also been told to keep the story up so that they could sue my ex-husband in a civil suit. The White child's parents lived in a trailer park. My ex-husband lived in a 4,000 square foot house on about three acres of land. I could say a lot more about that but I won't. I have forgiven him. Time has passed. There is nothing more to be done. Suffice it to say, "youthful indiscretion" has never been applied to my sons. The label of criminal and thug has always been applied until one of my sons caved in and accepted what he had been told he was.
Over the years I've heard it so many times. "You don't act like a Black man." "You're soft." And even more statements to tell my sons that because they liked ballet, wrote poetry, loved to draw, that they were not "real" Black men. We will not, in this country, stop lying and say that there is an image of what is expected to comprise what a Black man is and is not. Even on the silly MTV and BET reality shows, it becomes crystal clear that to be a Black man is to embody several pejoratives. If you do not follow the script? You're arrogant, condescending, and more. From those who look like you you're a "punk," "weak,"' and "think you something." To be an intelligent Black man somehow translates into a Black man who speaks, acts, or lives in a condescending manner to all other Black people. From music to movies the message is clear: be a nigger and be all the nigger you can be. Avoid trouble on the job and start smiling and never show your talents or gifts unless they involve singing, dancing, or bouncing a ball; entertainment is the only acceptable use of a Black man and incarceration in a jail cell is an expected place of habitation.
I go crazy on the inside when my sons don't call. If the son of Bill Cosby wasn't safe how can my sons be safe? If you don't recall, Ennis Cosby was murdered by a racist who was not even an American citizen. Where did Cosby's murderer learn that Black life was expendable and less than? Our movies go all around the world and infect those who have yet to acquire English language skills with the disease of American racism. Too many immigrants reach these American shores knowing one thing: Black, in America, is synonymous with bad. The only augmentation is the specification of our African brothers and sisters: American Black is synonymous with bad.
Are you like me? Do you go insane? Don't you just go crazy? On the inside? Your senses get heightened when you realize you haven't heard from them in a certain amount of time. You become so wrapped up in that one child, that one young man, that you (to be honest) sometimes emotionally neglect those who are at home or your daughters. No one can understand and it is misinterpreted as "babying." A Black son is no different than a hunted animal in the forest. An animal who is hunted from within and without. I've watched young men protesting Trayvon Martin's murder and I've wondered how many of them would have shot Trayvon for "disrespect" or something as trivial as stepping on a brand new athletic shoe. I know I shouldn't think like this but I do. I've seen it too many times to not come to this logical conclusion. To me, my son is a human, but to other young men on the street? He's something, a some thing, and the law seems to care nothing when our young men kill each other. It seems as if the only one who cares or who will care is a mother. His mother. So many fathers abandon their sons that I really can't say if they care or not. I can't understand and please help me with this: what would be so terribly wrong with a father connecting with his son once the mother is no longer dominant in their communication? To stop by and let him know he is loved and someone has an interest in him? Where's the harm? Too often, our young men never speak to a man until they're in an interrogation room across from a detective. The experience (if you've ever watched the A and E show "48 Hours") is too much for them and the hardest gangbanger tells all. Daddy is at last home. The detectives know this and they use it to their advantage. The absence of a father being used, in numbers of great success, to apprehend a murderer or to obtain information. This is only possible in Black America. But, I was asking you about the feelings you have which make sleep an impossibility.
What about when you're talking to them trying to warn them about all of the dangers and they blow you off? Laugh at you? Ignore you entirely? Or when you find out, after the fact, that they did or are doing, exactly what you told them not to do and they only confess when everything you said was going to happen really happened? Over and over, they think you don't know anything and sadly, all have to pay when they find out you're right. And it's not because we're so smart. It's because there are no new games on the street. And this new crop are more sloppy, easy to read, have no style and even no purpose. You tell them, if they're nice boys, then the real bad boys are going to want to use them just to feel like they're getting even at life. They think that their lives are so bad but then they go and hang around just out and out thugs. They want to talk and walk in a way that makes that bull's eye on their backs even more apparent. I know. Everyone has the right to walk around any way they want. Everyone has to deal with the consequences too. Sadly, for far too many Black mothers, we're left here on Earth or on the outside, to cry and make arrangements and carry even more hurt while they're either in jail or in a grave - free from the hard work. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to live a life that would put them in a jail cell. There are real animals in those prisons. Sick males who delight in rape and murder. Why would you want to be anywhere near those creatures? But our sons, because they've been led to believe this is what they're supposed to be and the law shows them no compassion and very little mercy. And because, sometimes we have contributed to their madness with our own mistakes, they pay a higher price than anyone else who commits or is accused of the same crime. I've been seeing something new in the topic of the sins of the mother. I've seen mothers who put sagging jeans on their toddlers. I've heard mothers call their beautiful brown boys, "nigger" and "motherfucker (and the same mothers also think nothing of calling their little girls, "bitch" and "hoe"). Our sons pay the price with their lives, civil death or real death. And we're, the Black mothers, are left to sit in bed at night wide awake and wondering what we did wrong and where they are and when is the nightmare going to end. Torture. A sentence of torture for mothering a Black son.
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