Impeccable

My son called on Sunday and told me a story that left a big rock in my chest. I can't write it here. He was very upset. I wished I could have climbed through the phone and sat with him, pulled him into my arms like when he was small, and let him talk it all out. He felt so betrayed, so vulnerable. Endangered. This is how it is to walk through the world in the skin he's in. He knows it too. He is such a good kid. Maybe he is this way because he knows his conduct has to be impeccable at all times, because every black male knows that if it ever comes to it, no one will take his word above anyone else's, especially not when the other word is white.

I raised my children in Harlem. I counseled them on street awareness, helped them hone their spidey sense, taught them that whenever they saw trouble brewing, they should just move on—which my son wisely did on Saturday night. I used to consider our neighborhood not quite safe, but now I think perhaps my children have been safer here than elsewhere. Harlem is fairly gentrified these days, but when my children walk out the door, many people look like them, no one is trying to challenge their right to be here. It's true I can't ever count on my son getting a cab on a New York City street, or my husband for that matter, but these streets are theirs nonetheless, no one questions that. And if I really examine this more deeply, when it came to my son, I worried less about street crime than about cops mistaking my boy for a street criminal. Turns out the chances of that happening are greatly reduced in a mostly black neighborhood.

What the fuck is going on in this country right now? This race shit is exploding everywhere. I feel so powerless to protect my loved ones sometimes.

Never wonder why I pray.