We watch.
We get up the next morning.
We give birth to baby boys whom Hollywood finds adorable and who show up in commercials and television shows and are coveted by white audiences for their cuteness and ten or fifteen years later we’ve raised those boys to be men who transition before white eyes into thugs.
Some of us live in middle- and upper-middle-class white communities thinking them safer, thinking them to be the place of arrival, of transcendence. We see Trayvon gunned down in a gated white community because he looked suspicious because his skin color and hoodie made him look suspicious and we gulp down our fear we who think we have passed into a better status with our money and privilege and degrees we gasp knowing we are wrong, know there is no place for us no place that is ours in America.
We have “The Talk” with our sons. Teach our sons how to kowtow to police. How not to draw attention to themselves. How to raise their hands in the air. How not to defend themselves even when they are sure they have done nothing wrong. How not to reach into their pockets for anything, not even to turn off their music. Please, baby, remember: do not reach into your pocket to turn off your music.
We teach them this while trying to also teach them to love themselves and not to be ashamed of their beautiful black bodies. Of their selves.