#BlackLivesMatter on the First Day of Kindergarten

One day he comes into the kitchen and tells you that the other kids wouldn't let him play their game and told him it was because he is the wrong color.  He is five years old.  And you think, Here we go.  Even before kindergarten, it begins.

All mothers are nervous before the start of Kindergarten.  I know this.  We are all concerned about mean teachers and mean children.  We fret that they won't eat their lunch or will have trouble making friends or will struggle with homework.  We are anxious that school will kill their curiosity and enthusiasm about learning.

But mothers of Black sons, and other sons of color, have extra worries you may never have considered.  Will he be excluded from games because of his race?  Will my child get blamed for something another child did because he is Black?  Will normal childhood behavior get him labeled as the bad kid when the same behavior in a white child would be tolerated?  Will he be expected to speak for his whole race whenever something about Black people comes up?  Will he have to sit through tone-deaf lesson plans and listen to teachers spout racist nonsense unaware of their own biases?  And these are just the threats to their hearts and souls.  There are also the threats to their bodies, from strangers who will make racist assumptions about them, perceive them as threats even before puberty.

The beginning of school is the start of their lives in an outside world where we cannot any longer protect them from those who will see them as stereotypes instead of as people.  Even before they can read or reliably tie their own shoes, Black children are more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students.  We know that Black boys are estimated to be much older than they actually are. That problem may have contributed to the murder by a police officer of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland.  The world is simply more hostile for our sons, even the world of school, where they ought to be safe.

These are the realities that Black mothers have lived with forever.  The fact that white mothers of Black sons are starting to talk openly about such things shouldn't make people take it more seriously.  Sadly, perhaps it will, so here I am talking about it.

I am grateful that my son is extremely well-behaved in public and focused in preschool.  He is polite and friendly and endearing and happy and, for a few more years at least, very cute.  But I know that isn't enough to protect him.  Respectability is not enough to protect any of our sons, but we cling to it anyway, because it's better than nothing, because we know they'll have to work twice as hard as everyone else to get the respect they deserve. I am grateful to live in a part of the country that is no longer majority white, and in which overt racism is socially stigmatized.  I'm grateful that we chose a neighborhood in which the school is fairly diverse.  I'm grateful for our church community full of adults and older children of color who provide role models and advice when things happen.

I am also afraid.  I fear that I won't be there to defend him the first time someone calls him the N-word.  (I know we are lucky it hasn't happened yet.)  I fear that when he gets into an argument with a white student, it will automatically be the tall Black kid's fault.  I fear that my white privilege cannot protect him when he isn't holding my hand.  I fear that by the end of 5th grade he will be a scary Black man in the eyes of strangers.

But I am not paralyzed by my fear.  We prepare him as best we can.  We talk about racism.  We talk about what to do if someone calls him out of his name.  We talk about in the fact that he doesn't have to answer people's questions about his family if he doesn't want to, that he can decide how to tell his own story.  We talk about not wearing your hood up and how you talk to police, how you behave if you get pulled over.  We don't obsess over the dangers.  We don't teach him to be terrified of the whole world.  But we do speak honestly and openly about race and racism. He has already been excluded from games because of his color, after all. To deny that reality would damage him as much as the obnoxious children who excluded him, maybe more.

I am also not consumed by my fear.  I still talk with excitement with him about his new adventure.  I still stand grinning in the back-to-school section looking at lunch boxes.  I still get his wardrobe ready and hope for a good teacher and gossip with my mom friends about all the changes in store.  I still love that he loves his new backpack and insists on wearing it around the house.  But the worry is still in the back of my mind, even then.

Now, I know that some of you think I am borrowing trouble.  Some of you think this is a post-racial America, and racism is over, and talking about race makes me the real racist.  Some of you don't talk about race with your kids because you want them to be "colorblind." Refusing to discuss or acknowledge racism only allows it to perpetuate.  Perhaps if more white people would speak up, with their kids and with their friends, we wouldn't have to be so scared to see our sons growing older.

Racism isn't just hoods and burning crosses.  We are all products of a culture that teaches that white is best, and nobody grows up in a culture like that without being affected.  No power structure is immune from that influence, be it police department or church or school district or classroom.  So many people want to deny this reality, perhaps for fear of accepting blame. 

So we allow our world to continue to kill Black kids and then try to find a reason they had it coming.  He should have been more polite.  Why did she mouth off like that?  He shouldn't have run.  It's his parents' fault.  Look how trashy they are.  He should have gone straight home.  Never you mind that a white kid in the same situation would still be breathing.

And so mothers of Black sons are afraid sometimes, and we have to be brave, because that is the world into which we send our beloved sons on the first day of kindergarten: a world in which they are at the very bottom of the list of which lives matter.  

A.M. Manay is a writer and mother.  Her novel, She Dies at the End, is available on Amazon Kindle.  Follow her on twitter (@ammanay) or Facebook (facebook.com/ammanaywrites).

This SAE thing . . . I can't even

I'm sure all of you, rock-dwellers aside, have heard about the SAE racism scandal at the University of Oklahoma.  The school seems to be taking things seriously, expelling both the fraternity and some of the ringleaders.  Now one of the kids' parents have issued a statement which reads like one part apology, one part denial, and forty-six parts white privilege.

Now, I can kind of understand where these parents are coming from.  They don't want everyone to think their kid is a monster. They probably think they didn't raise their kid to be racist.  White people seem to think that unless you're a card carrying Klan member, you can't be a racist.  We think that if we don't consciously think or say, "I think white people are better than everyone else, and I hate Black people super much," then we're not racist.  We don't acknowledge that racism is instead a system of oppression that affects all of us.

I don't think this young man's parents sat him down when he was a kid and said, "Son, I want you to hate Black people."  That isn't how you wind up with kids who would sing that song, not most of the time.  Hey, maybe they never even used the n-word at the dinner table.  But there are plenty of ways white parents pass down racism to their kids without even noticing.  I'm going to focus on anti-Black racism for the moment, since that is the case with the SAE issue.

A (very) partial list of ways you can teach your kids to think of Black people as "less than"

1) When an unarmed Black kid gets shot by the cops, calling him a "thug" who had it coming instead of acknowledging that Black kids are more likely than white kids to get shot for the same behavior.
2) When an unarmed Black kid gets shot by the cops, posting "police lives matter" memes, as if cop killers routinely walk free in our country and we really need to be reminded that their lives matter.
3) Bringing up "Black-on-Black crime" every time someone tries to talk about police brutality, as if the one cancels out the other, or as it Black people don't care about that, too.
4) Using the terms "race baiter" or "playing the race card" when a person of color tries to talk about their lived experience.
5) Laughing at cartoons of the President picking cotton and eating watermelon.

"But Anne Margaret," you say, "I would never say any or do any of those things!  Surely my child cannot grow up to think singing a song about lynching is funny."  Well, buckle in for some "racism lite."

Some more ways you can leave your kids racially ignorant in ways that will eventually cause them to hurt other people

1) Refusing to talk about race with your kids because you think that somehow this will cause your kids to grow up to be "colorblind" or simply because you don't ever think about it much, because, hey, you don't have to think about race.  After all, you're white.  Newsflash: we all see color, assuming our eyes work correctly.
2) Not acknowledging that racism still exists and discussing it with your kids (in age appropriate fashion) when examples arise.
3) Whispering about race like it's dirty: "You, know, Kenny, in accounting . . . [whispers] he's Black."
4) Refusing to talk about the ugly parts of American History that have shaped our country into what it is today. (I'm looking at you, Oklahoma.)
5) Pretending we live in a "post-racial America" when our culture sends constant messages that white is better.
6) Not ever interacting with people who are different from you.


I  know it is hard to talk about racism.  Do you think I enjoy explaining to my Black child that people who looked like me used to own people who looked like him and do horrible things to them?  Do you think I like teaching my kid to never wear his hood up and to always keep his hands where the police can see them?  Do you think I like talking about Black people being denied the right to vote?  Do you think I want to talk to him about what to do when someone does or says something racist to him?  I do it because I have to in order to try to keep him safe, mostly from white people whose parents couldn't be bothered to teach them properly.

Black people have to do this shit with their kids every day since forever.  It's time for white people to step up with theirs. Read a damn book, broaden your horizons, face reality, and talk to your kids on a regular basis about these things. 

Those SAE parents wanted to tell everyone that in spite of his mistakes, their son has a good heart.  You know who else always says that?  The mothers of those unarmed Black boys shot dead in the street by the police.  Then tons of people make fun of them for being "ghetto" and call their dead babies "thugs." 

And that is how you get college kids who think singing a song about murdering a Black man to prevent him from joining a club is funny.

Five Life Lessons From Disneyland, In No Particular Order

We recently made our first family trip to Disneyland. It was, in the words of our five-year-old, "totally epic." I had a lot of time to mull things over while standing in line for tickets, standing in line for rides, standing in line to meet characters, standing in line to avoid standing in later lines, standing in line to eat, standing in line to pee, standing in lines for a bus to another line, etc. Here is a summary of my musings, and I won't even make you stand in line to read them.

1) Don't force your kids to do things they aren't ready for.

This applies to many areas of life, but Disneyland makes it uncomfortably obvious in the weeping, screaming faces of children mid-meltdown. There is no point in bringing a kid younger than five to Disneyland. You will pay a lot of money, and everyone will suffer. Between the skeletons freaking everywhere and the overpriced toys around every corner, you are well and truly screwed if your kid is not old enough to have some degree of control over his feelings.

This lesson applies to many areas of life. Perhaps a 3-year-old doesn't need tutoring or to be playing three sports, for example. Perhaps it's okay that my kid needs a nightlight, hasn't yet read War and Peace, and still wakes up with a wet pull-up in the morning. I'm pretty sure that by the time he leaves for college, he will possess both literacy and bladder control.

2) Churros are yummy.

Enough said.

3) A place that is fun can still be casually racist.

Tiana. Iridessa. The Black baby dolls singing "It's a Small World." There, I've listed all the Black characters I saw at Disneyland who aren't shooting poison arrows or wearing hats made of bananas -- and only the singing babies had curly hair.

Does this statement mean that I think everyone who works at Disney is a racist, and you can't go there ever again, and if you have fun there you're a terrible human being, and I don't want to be your friend anymore, and we should feel guilty for being born white? No.

Does this mean that I think white supremacy and white privilege are pervasive in our culture and I saw that in stark relief at Disneyland? Yes. Does it mean that it makes me sad that my Black/Indian kid sees very few people there who look like him? Yes. Do I think white people need to be more aware of and self-aware about these kinds of issues and be a part of fighting the good fight? Yes. 

4) Personal interaction makes a bigger impression than dazzling technology.

You know what my kid loved best at Disneyland? It wasn't the amazing rides, though Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters was a big hit. It was meeting and conversing with Captain America and getting to fight Darth Vader in the Jedi Training Academy. He loved interacting with the characters and staff and playing pretend with the other kids on Pirate Island and in Toon Town. He loved telling his tales of adventure to anyone in earshot back at the hotel. He loved spending time with his parents and his birthmother and sharing his excitement with us. The joy was in the interaction and the relationships.

Kids don't need an expensive trip or pricey gadgets to make happy memories. They just need us and an adventure of their own making.

5) Good things come to those who wait.

We did a lot of waiting in line, as I may have mentioned earlier. My kiddo was a trooper. After every ride, I asked him if the wait was worth it. Every time, he said that it was. We never knew for sure while we were doing the waiting of course. We had our moments of doubt. Maybe Nemo will stay lost, we thought. Maybe all the animatronic children singing "It's a Small World" will come to life and kill us all in their first step to world domination. Maybe I'll barf on Star Tours. Okay, that last one is a bad example since it almost actually happened. The point is that in the end, generally, our perseverance was rewarded.

Good things come after a time of waiting. Good things can even come during a time of waiting.

This is a lesson we hear often in the church: look at Advent and Lent. But sometimes in our daily lives, we want everything to come so quickly.

This is a lesson I often struggle to remember as we wait (over 2 years so far this time around) to see if anyone out there will choose us to raise her child. It is a lesson I have to repeat to myself as I struggle to make progress writing my stories and getting them published in my very limited free time. It is a lesson I often forget when I get impatient with my health, when Lupus seems to be winning and my treatments seem to struggle to make any headway.

When I get impatient, I need to remember that when I look back at periods of my life spent waiting, those aren't bad memories. The journey still contained joy and growth and fun. I also need to remember that every time I've been seemingly stuck in an endless line, that every time the days have crawled by with little to show for them, when I got to the front of the line, the ride was still worth it: better, even, than Astro Blasters.