I will always remember the day my parents gave my brother “the talk.” Not the one about the birds and the bees. No, the one about how he, as a young black man, would be seen in a society marred by racism. It was the 90s and he was a pre-teen, excited to wear his new Timberland boots and coat with a giant Nike swoosh across the back as he walked to school alone. I still feel their anxiety – that their son might be viewed as a threat, and could be endangered as a result.
This was not the first time that racism came up in our family conversations. There was the time that we were at a show – I believe it was the Ice Capades – as a family, and a woman looked at my brother, at this point maybe five or six years old, and moved her purse.
It was there in the stories that we were told – about the time my father was holding me as a toddler outside a store while my mother shopped. I was crying for my mother, as toddlers do, and a woman walked up to us and spoke directly to me, with my pale skin and strawberry blonde ringlets and asked me if I was okay.
Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/447812/why-will-this-time-be-different-than-all-other-times/
