I have said it before but I am going to say it again, while raising kids in general is hard, it’s a job that is a lot harder when you are raising boys of color in the US. When raising a young man of color, it’s almost as if you are doing so with that double consciousness that W.E.B DuBois spoke of so many years ago. For me that meant raising my now 20 year old with a parental mindset but sadly with the knowledge that one day he would not be seen as just a kid but that he will be seen as a potential suspect. I am sure for some of you that very concept may seem strange but to anyone raising a young man of color, you are probably nodding your head.
Four years ago, when my son 16 one early evening he took a walk down to the local convenience snack shop to grab a bite to eat, nothing extraordinaire about that fact. Hell, teenagers often go out to grab a bite to eat! Well my son grabbed a steak and cheese sandwich and an iced tea and proceeded to walk back home as he had done many times before. However not even a block away from the store a cop stopped him, demanding to see what was in hands and then proceeded to tell him he looked like a suspect they were looking for who had been burglarizing cars. Before he knew it, he was in the back of the cop car and being driven home by the cops who wanted to talk to his parents. Never mind that my son wasn’t at my house fulltime, my son by then knew to say very little, he stated his name and the fact he was 16. Well the local cop pulled up in our driveway but not before implying that he was dubious that my son really lived where he said he did.
As fate would have it, I was out at a meeting so the Spousal Unit opened the door and quickly proceeded to ask the cop what the hell was he doing and also explaining he did not appreciate him harassing our son. In the end the cop apologized but not before the hubster expressed that he was dubious of the cop which resulted in the cop telling the hubster that he was friends with people of all races.
By the time I got home and the story was shared with me, I was ready to go to the police station to tear a new asshole in the captain and everyone else. My son asked me to let it go, but as a mother that situation disturbed me. What if this wasn’t a smaller town and the cop was trigger happy? I would have come home to a dead 16 year old son. Of course as the years have gone on, my son has had many more run ins with police both in New England and the Midwest. Never any charges but always the you look suspicious charge. Once driving back to his Dad’s from college he was stopped two times on the same drive. Sad to say if you think what my son faces is an isolated incident you couldn’t be more mistaken.
Fast forward to Trayvon Martin, a teenager in Florida visiting his Dad who decided to go to the convenience store and sadly never made it home. It seems after picking up some Skittles for a sibling and an iced tea, Trayvon crossed paths with the neighborhood watch leader that felt a teenage boy armed with skittles and an iced tea was so dangerous he had to pull out his 9mm gun and George Zimmerman the watch leader shot him dead. Zimmerman claims that he and Trayvon got into a scuffle and that he feared for his safety so much so that he had to shoot a child.
Let me say that having been the mother of a teenage boy that while on the surface they may look big, the fact is one good look at their faces generally reveals the child they really are and why in 2012 couldn’t Zimmerman pick up the phone and call 911?
Trayvon’s story is starting to get out but let me ask where’s the outrage? What happened to Trayvon is not that unique other than the fact normally it’s the police that harm young men of color, in this case we have an overzealous community member who decided to take the law into his own hands. Frankly when I heard what happened to Trayvon my blood ran cold because I could easily see Trayvon as my own boy. Just a boy going out and doing what kids do.
Last week the world was on fire about Joseph Kony with the whole Kony2012 campaign and while what happened to the children in Uganda is an outrage and Kony needs to be caught what about the kids in our own country? Every day brown and black boys in this country are under assault, from cops that would gladly lock our boys up to teachers who deny their humanity and slap an ill-fitting label on them.
I say we need Trayvon2012, stop the brutality against brown and black boys in this country and stop it now. Look in the mirror and face our own internal biases that allow us to look at the brown and black boys close to us as monsters and realize that it is systematic racism that allows this to happen.
So let me add Trayvon2012 to Kony2012 to bring awareness to the plight of boys of color in this country.
PS: The suspect the cops were looking when they stopped my son turned out to be a good 6 inches shorter and several shades lighter.
Thank you for writing and posting this: it is so true what the heck? I’m really angry about this and the state of Florida allowing this murderer to go free…
This Trayvon Martin story makes me sick to my stomach. I cannot even begin to express my anger and hurt over this incident. I can’t imagine what his mother and father are going through right now. Sadly, I am not shocked that this happened. We are heading back to a pre-Civil Rights America; it’s happening right before our very eyes and people keep insisting that we are post race. Right now, I have very little love for non-brown and black people (to put it euphemistically) who don’t OPENLY stand up against and condemn white privilege and racism in this country. You are either with us or you aren’t. That’s my view in 2012 and until I see otherwise, it isn’t going to change.
I am waiting for there to be a call for a national march to that city, as I seriously think I would drive down there to protest.
I wish we lived in a post-racial society, but we have a long, long way to go. It’s the first time I have heard of Trayvon Martin’s story and that saddens me, as does the story itself. Guns aren’t the panacea the NRA seems to think they are.
Ugh…”their” should be “there” and “scuffled” should be “scuffle” *grumble*
It’s a little worse than you think, actually. As I understand it from reading some other posts about this, Zimmerman called the police to tell them about the “suspicious character” and was told NOT to engage him but to wait for the police. If that’s what happened, the only reason their WAS a scuffled between the two of them was because Zimmerman disregarded the instructions of the police.
My son is 9 years old and he’s light like me. He’s mixed, and he honestly doesn’t understand (no matter how much I explain it to him) that he is half black because his skin is so light. I haven’t started telling him that there are people out there who will hate him, will suspect him, will treat him badly because of it. That there will be black people who will treat him badly and hate him because he is half black but has light skin.
It’s like–how do I raise him to be aware without making him lose his innocence just yet? And I don’t want someone else to tell him (and you KNOW someone else will be all to happy to do it and not in a nice way) that they think he is less than because he is half black. *I* don’t want to tell him either, but I want to warn him. HOW do I do that? How do I do it so that he actually gets it?
Stories like what happened to your son? That infuriates me. It all goes back to that “They all look alike” bull crap. Really? REALLY? Because no. We don’t. And if those cops had looked past that initial brown skin to some actual traits, they’d have known he wasn’t the guy. Or you know, the fact that he was carrying a freaking sandwich and a beverage. I don’t know about you, but I don’t picture burglars bringing their dinner along for the job. But then, what do I know?
And the fact that the guy who killed Trayvon? Still doesn’t seem like he’s getting in any trouble for it.
Post racial society my a$$.
Now I’m just mad.