What I dread telling my black son

By Aaron Taylor

It’s nearly 11 P.M. I’m sitting upstairs in my recliner typing away on my laptop, trying to figure out which words will follow the next. What I really want to be doing is holding my 4-year old son. I want to rest his head against my shoulders and cling to his innocence before it slips away. I used to believe that by providing a middle class suburban life for my son, complete with the best public schools and services that my state has to offer, that somehow I could keep him safe. Since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the gunning down of Trayvon Martin, that illusion is now gone.

My son is black and I am white.

This is what I dread telling him when he becomes a teenager.

Isaac, when you were 18 months old, you left your native country of Ethiopia and you became our son. Your mother and I love you. Your grandma and grandpa, aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends: we all love you and want the best for you. But Isaac, you’re not the cute little boy anymore that looks like he can be on the Disney Channel. Now that you’re a teenager, there are some in our society who will make assumptions about you based solely on how you look. And if you’re ever in a situation where you feel threatened by someone who has made assumptions about you, even if you’re walking home unarmed in the dark of night and some creepy guy is following you, you don’t have the right to defend yourself. Because mark my words son, if there’s a confrontation, society will not side with the guy who looks like you, they’ll side with the guy who looks like me.

I know that when you were a little boy you used to look up to police officers. When you saw a police officer, you used to tell them that you wanted to be a police officer too when you grow up. And the police officers adored you right back. But now that you’re older, if you’re ever confronted by a police officer and you do the wrong thing, I’m not going to be there to protect you. So, please, respect their authority and know that they’re there to help you and protect you. But if they ever stop you for any reason and you run—they just might shoot you. So, please, don’t run!

I imagine there are some who might be shocked at the prospect of me telling my son to be cautious with police officers, lest he be shot. But let me tell you about millions of people who wouldn’t be shocked. Black people.

Growing up I was never taught to be cautious or afraid of police officers because police officers were the good guys that could protect me from the bad guys. Racial profiling wasn’t real because nobody that I knew had ever experienced it. Part of me wishes that I could still live with that worldview, the one that says that racism is a thing of the past, that anyone who says otherwise is simply trying to further an agenda to fatten their pockets, that racial profiling is something that black people made up so that they can keep prejudice alive and our nation divided. As wrongheaded as it is, it can be very comforting when you reflexively attribute morality to people who look like you and menace to people who look like them. Now that I’m a white father with a black son, I don’t have the luxury of that kind of delusion anymore.

So to my fellow white adoptive parents with minority children, when the white establishment tries to deflect the subject away from civil rights for black men by talking about “black on black crime” (as if the vast majority of white people aren’t killed by other white people), we can’t let the establishment get away with it. They can change the subject. We can’t.

When a black male teenager is shot and killed and the white establishment goes on a smear campaign against that teenager, digging into his school records and sniffing for drugs, let’s remind the establishment how many troubled white teenagers smoke pot and yet we assume that they simply need more love and nurture, not that they deserved to die because they wore the wrong piece of clothing on a dark, rainy night.

Let’s remind them.

Because at the end of the day, these are our sons that they’re talking about.

Guess who's been racially profiled?

I watched the interview with Colin Powell last night on Larry King with great interest. I felt that Powell's comments were respectful both to Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley. What floored me was when Larry King asked Colin Powell if he had ever been racially profiled. You can watch Powell's commentary here, then read my comment below. No peaking:



Did the same thing strike you? If Colin Powell could be racially profiled while he was the national security advisor to the president of the United States, what does that say for the countless other black Americans that claim they have been racially profiled?

Shouldn't we take their claims a little more seriously?

Nigerian scammers, African American robbers, and racist white cops--the problem with stereotypes

The last day I was in Nigeria, I was riding in the car with my host to the airport, making small conversation, when all of the sudden the conversation took a more serious turn. Seemingly out of nowhere, the man said "It's a shame that the Western media portrays us Nigerians as crooks and robbers. There are many good people here. After all, can you guarantee that if I go to America that I won't be robbed?"

Gulp.

Good point.

I have to admit that I had harbored some pretty negative stereotypes of Nigerians before my trip last week, and I consider myself to be a person that works hard to fight negative stereotypes against entire groups of people. Even so, my impression of Nigeria before actually going there was that it's a nation of corrupt politicians, e-mail scammers, and a church steeped in witchcraft and extreme prosperity teaching. In my defense, some of the stereotypes came from my Nigerian friends and from watching Nigeria movies in the past, but even so, I should have known better.

The problem with stereotypes is they put walls between people, and they allow people to think they know someone without actually taking the time to get to know the person. I have a feeling that the vast majority of people don't fit the stereotypes placed upon them. Whether they be stereotypes of religion, race, or political persuasion.

So let me just say in light of the recent unjust arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Not all Nigerians are crooks. Not all African Americans are robbers. And not all white cops are racist. Having said that, I think that racial profiling is a huge problem and needs to be addressed. While we address the problem, let's not forget that unjust stereotypes come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.