Black motherhood in America

In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti Austin examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single, Black motherhood, and confronts the reality of raising children of color in racially charged, modern-day America.

“Come on, August, grab your pullover.” I waited for my little boy at our front door.

“Where are we going, Mama?” August asked, dragging his black Gap sweatshirt behind him across the hardwood floors.

“To a rally at the park,” I answered, sliding the hoodie over his tall, slender body. Handsome and inquisitive at only five years old, August already had the makings of a scientist/cowboy/race car driver, and I was proud of how far he had come. In a past life, before we became a family, August had lived in two foster homes. Meanwhile, I earned a license to foster/adopt from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. After months of certification and waiting, I became a mother to a six-month-old Black baby boy, and my life changed forever.

As we made our way down the dusty steps and onto the street, August asked, “What’s a rally?”

“It where lots of people who like the same things come together and talk or sing.” Earlier that morning, I had googled the Black Lives Matter website to see when they were coming to Los Angeles. As I scrolled down the page, I discovered a rally that night. I was frankly surprised a rally would be held in Beverly Hills. Of course, there was wealth in the area, but this was not a fundraiser. It was an event that was designed to bring white people, far removed from blight, gangs, and poverty, out into the street in support of Black lives. It was one thing to send money or sit at home and hand-wring. It was another to publicly cry foul at a system that routinely oppressed Black people. That’s what I had done by adopting August, and that was the reason I took him out that night.

“Like a party?” His eyes lit up.

My child was not even in kindergarten and already a party animal. “Um, not really.” It was already seven o’clock. Ordinarily, August would be getting into a warm, sudsy bath at this time of the evening. After he played with his boats and fish, he’d be ready for a cup of milk. Then August, who liked brushing his teeth, would delay bedtime by splashing water all over the sink. While I cleaned up, he would choose three or four books from his overflowing red-and-blue bookcase and wait for me in his twin bed. Tonight, I was disrupting his routine for one reason. I needed to connect with other mothers of Black boys.

“Why are we going?”

Good question. My heart echoed President Obama’s sentiment that Trayvon’s murder was a national tragedy. This was one of the few moments in history that the death of a Black boy was elevated to a national tragedy. I took a beat to consider how to broach the subject. If I gave my sensitive child too much information, he would feel bad without understanding why. If I gave too few details, he would miss the importance of the moment. I did not want to frighten him, but lying wasn’t the answer either.

“Why, Mama?” he asked again.

“Because a few weeks ago, a boy named Trayvon Martin was killed walking home, and we want to show our support.”

I spoke calmly, hoping to give August the impression that despite using the words boy and killed, my son was safe. I pretended we were just taking a casual stroll to the park, though the circumstances were far from normal. Except, I quickly realized, they were normal. This was my new normal. Most Blacks were taught that life was tenuous and this reality was just part of living in America. Before becoming a mother, I was detached from what that really meant. I lived in an affluent neighborhood and ran with a highly educated, well-traveled crowd. I thought my privilege shielded me from ugly truths about the actual worth of a Black life. Trayvon Martin’s murder opened my eyes to the new reality Black mothers faced every day. There was no guarantee that our boys would arrive home safely from school or back from the store after purchasing Skittles.

Trayvon’s death grounded my parenting priorities. I went from trying to understand the difference between the Montessori and the Reggio Emilia approaches to education, to understanding that I was part of a club whose sole membership requirement was being the mother of a Black boy, and feeling the weight of that fear keenly for the first time. Suddenly, I was scared for August, who shared a birthday with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I wept inside because there would be times in August’s life when trouble would find him, even if he was just out minding his own business, all because his racial classification was Black. Trayvon’s death gave me another thing to worry about: life. How could I protect my son? How could I give him the best life, one where he enjoyed a childhood of trains and dinosaurs, not rallies for the gone-too-soon? In my new skin as mother of a Black boy, I had to think through how we would navigate a world set up to challenge his very existence. The task was daunting and made me feel powerless and small.

“Mama, I don’t know Trayvon. He must be in Miss Isabella’s class.”

“No, he was a big boy,” I said softly.

“What does kill mean?”

I had seen that one coming. “Kill means…” I faltered and tried again. “Um, killing is like when you step on ants and they die.”

August frowned. “Did someone step on Trayvon? That’s mean.”

“I don’t know all of the details, but — ” I lied to stop the hole of fear that was swallowing me. “There are some mean people in the world, and a mean man killed Trayvon.”

“Will that happen to me?”

I stopped walking and bent down, cupping August’s face in my hand, and looked into his beautiful brown eyes. “Oh no, angel, but you need to know that some people will think just because you’re a Black boy that you are not smart and funny. They will not care how much you love Elmo or how you got angry when you found out Pluto was a dwarf planet.”

“Why?” he asked sadly.

“I don’t know. Some people are stupid.”

“Ooh, you said a bad word.”

“Oops!” I covered my mouth and pretended to giggle.

“Can I get on the slide when we get to the park?” August was hopeful.

“Not tonight, son.”

I’m not sure if he understood that I had just done something terrible, had stolen some of his innocence. I had no choice. In ten years, August would be more than six feet tall, and people would assume he was older than he really was. He would not be given the “boys will be boys” benefit of the doubt for speeding or participat- ing in immature class pranks. Trayvon’s murder unleashed a veil that separated August’s previous life as a precious, innocent babe to a child who would have to learn that his race and gender could get him killed.

I took my job as mother seriously, not only about teaching August how to tie his shoes or his ABCs, but about the institutional racism that was and would be a part of his life. No matter how fancy our zip code, he would need that information to stay alive. Woke to the broader meaning of Black motherhood, over the past few years I turned inward to examine my own life to determine why I decided to become a single mother via adoption — not an easy path for any woman, but especially a Black woman, to follow — especially when parenting in America is still filtered through a white lens.

Excerpted from Motherhood So White by Nefertiti Austin by permission of Sourcebooks. Download Buzz Books 2019 to read more of this title, as well as 44 other excerpts of forthcoming books.