What black people teach their sons

[kdmorris]

Upworthy posted this bit of art. It's a little long, but worth watching. THIS is what black people have to teach their sons and STILL their sons get shot.

This is a poem by Javon Johnson, describing a day with his nephew:

[tkmorris]

1. K&R from me

I may be biased though.

[loyalsister]

2. White people especially need to try to digest this

precisely because it does not reflect our experience and is difficult to comprehend. Thanks for posting!

[murielm99]

3. Leonard Pitts wrote this some time ago,

but I have never forgotten it.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-10-09/news/0510090104_1_race-and-crime-bennett-reduce-crime

I never forgot what he said about his son's eyes, and how a part of him (Leonard Pitts) died every time he saw that picture of his child.

[loyalsister]

5. Thanks!

That's heartbreaking. After the murder of Trayvon Martin, I contacted an old HS friend who had adopted a black child. I asked her if he had mentors who could teach him the rules his siblings and cousins did not have to learn. She had an attitude that their family is "color-blind" and it's not something they feel they have to worry about because they live in a good god fearing community, etc. I think about them from time to time and it makes me very sad.

[kdmorris]

8. That is so very sad

I assume that the mistaken equation black=crime came from the post-Civil War south, when they would arrest African-Americans at alarming and unequal rates for the most specious of crimes and send them to work on the plantations that no longer had "slaves". In effect, they were taking advantage of the clause "except for as punishment for a crime" part of the 13th amendment to enslave the newly freed slaves.

[kdmorris]

9. Yes, I think so

My son-in-law has been pulled over once for driving home after midnight. He told me that "everything was OK, because the police officer recognized him as the manager of the grocery store he normally shopped at", so he let me go. He was supposedly stopped because his tail light was out... but he was never able to find which tail light was out.

[MohRokTah]

4. Let me tell you a story. I'm a white man in his fifties, and this peom terrifies the shit out of me.

See, my brother married a woman who is Jamaican. They have a son.

I am terrified for my nephew, and I become more terrified every day since Trayvon Martin was murdered.

[MohRokTah]

6. Kick eom

[kdmorris]

7. My grandson is of mixed race

Since my daughter has been with her husband (4 years) and more so since the birth of my grandson, I've come to realize just how much I didn't know about life in America as a black man.

It terrifies me for my son-in-law and my grandson.

[sheshe2]

10. Thank you, kdmorris.

heartbreaking...

[Boudica the Lyoness]

11. When my son was 4 yrs old

if he told me we had to hide form the police, I would have asked who told him that and I would have removed that person from his life....no matter what it took.

I raised my son to behave himself and he has. He has never started fights (or been in fights) and he's never stolen. He respects the law, is polite, well spoken, hard working and even drives a Prius (lol). He's never had any kind of negative experience with the police.

It never occurred to me to start him out in life with a chip on his shoulder. My son is retiring from the U.S. air force this year.