Joy and Blackness
“Does telling Black children the truth rob them of joy?”
“I want her childhood to be longer” she told me……. And I didn’t know what to say.
My friend and I were discussing racism and how we explain it to our kids. She’s white, married to a Black man, with a bi-racial son.
She does not discuss race and racism with her child….at all.
I made a joke.
Me — So what are you gonna wake Sean (not his real name) up in the middle of the night and say “Sean honey, you’re Black, go back to sleep” ?
She smiled a little but I could tell she was uncomfortable.
I have many friends with biracial children and they all handle discussing racism differently. I know they all have their best interest at heart. But what struck me was this……
I didn’t know that NOT discussing race and racism with Black children was an OPTION. I thought it was just part of life.
My friend’s child is clearly Black. He looks nowhere NEAR white.
Does NOT discussing race and racism with him preserve more of his Joy? What DOES it do?
Hmmmmmm
I’m Black and female and I definitely had bad moments of misogyny and racism occur in my childhood, but did it dampen my joy?
Does telling Black children the truth rob them of Joy?
Doesn’t it suck that we even have to talk about this?
Summer of 2016
We’re watching the news, eating dinner. A police officer shoots into the car at Philando Castile while his girlfriend and her 3 year old daughter scream in horror.
My daughter Luna, then 9 years old, runs crying from the room. I’m furious for so many reasons and trying not to cry.
- The Newscast didn’t prep me for this
- They SHOT a man in cold blood
- They shot him in the presence of a child
- My daughter saw that
- She can’t unsee it
I follow her to the bathroom where she was sobbing. She can barely breathe.
Luna — Why did he DO THAT?????
She kept repeating it over and over again. Then she confessed to me that she often volunteers to ride with her Daddy wherever he goes because….. the police won’t kill him if she’s there.
My heart sunk. My daughter was ACTUALLY plotting ways to keep her father alive.
I answered the question.
Me — Why did he do that?….. Because he doesn’t value Black life
There it is. Fight me on it if you dare.
Luna sat on my lap, on the edge of the tub, and cried a little more. Keith knocked at the door and she rushed to him, giving him the tightest hug ever.
There are so many stories of unarmed Black people being murdered by the police.
And now it’s escalated to every day racist, white folks playing overseer on us, going to Massa (the Police) to escort us from the premises…. otherwise known as The United States of America.
911 has become White Folks Customer Service.
It’s repulsive and it never was their country. You can’t steal land, steal people, steal ideas, steal resources, steal labor, steal time and think for one moment your are GREAT.
You are just GREAT at stealing.
And the biggest gaslight, the stereotyping of POC that reads “savage, thief, rapist, marauder, loiterer, thug, and criminal”, is a PROJECTION.
Kinda like the man that cheats on his wife, yet always accuses her of sleeping around. His world is steeped in filth and deception. So he worries the same will be done to him.
Projection.
But back to my kid.
My daughter has the softest smile in the world.
She is beautiful.
She is smart.
She has a ton of friends.
She is Black, Black, Black Beautiful.
And she knows joy…inside her Blackness.
She knows the brutality of racism. But she knows the millions of Black folk before her that survived and flourished IN SPITE of white supremacy.
She knows the Greatness of the people she comes from, like Ida B Wells. She knows the level of fearlessness this woman had to methodically report of lynchings while she got death threats every day. EVERY DAMN DAY.
And back then they would string you up faster than you could pluck a chicken.
She knows a long list of freedom fighters that tirlessly fought for our freedom and justice.
She finds joy in them because I tell her…
“THIS is what you come from. Blackness is Greatness. They fought so WE could stand tall.”
Strong. Black, Beautiful and Free.
My son went to the very BEST pre-school in the world, Little Maroons. It’s a vegan, African-centered pre-school and they wholeheartedly do God’s work.
The learning of Freedom Fighters is as common as the ABC’s. They are taught to love themselves from INSIDE their Blackness.
My son celebrated Malcom X’s birthday like it was his own. And I cried the day we left.
Malcolm X was once a little boy.
He shot marbles and played some version of tag.
He had his favorite candy, played King of the Hill and his father was murdered by white men. His family was split up and his mother was committed to a mental institution.
Losing your husband to violence and having the state split up and farm out your children will do that to you.
His smile in this photo makes me realize we Black folk have ALWAYS been in the thorniest of places and spaces.
But we still feel joy.
Maybe it is our way of giving the middle finger to those that thought they ensured our demise. Maybe THAT’S what unnerves #PermitPatty and #BarbequeBecky. The fact that we honestly weren’t meant to survive this shit at all.
Let alone looking good while we do it.
There was never supposed to be a Serena Williams or a Michael Brown from Lamarr High School that got into 20 universities including Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Stanford.
That was never supposed to happen.
There never was supposed to be a world wide phenomenom known as Beyonce, spouting lyrics like
“I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros
I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils
Earned all this money but they never take the country out me
I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag”
Or the insanely wonderful writer Ta-Nehesi Coates and his words
“The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine.”
We were never supposed to know that…and say it.
Many times our joy comes from the common-ness of racism through state sanctioned violence we live through.
The Trifling
I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now; relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren’t coming after me!
- Richard Pryor
Black people perfected the art of laughing at the Trifling.
Because we have to.
We have to love and laugh hard because the ongoing genocide of Black folks….. is an Unbelievable Every Day Circumstance
So we match a Joy for every Pain.
And our ability to survive that…that is our Magic.
So yes, Black children will always find joy.
They hold Joy. They make Joy. They spread Joy
Black folk still love each other and everyone else. Even the folks that don’t deserve it.
Because magic cannot be explained….. only witnessed.
Every time I see a smiling Black child, my heart is reminded of One True Thing.
We will always be here.
In Spite
In Spite
In Spite………………………………………………………..
And with a JOY you can’t touch
#TheSystem
#YesIAMThatMom
