Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a diverse crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly s…
Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a diverse crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly strangers.
They were going to talk about something they didn’t normally share with their white friends or colleagues.
It was about to get real in that room.
In the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, conversations about race in the St. Louis area have been loaded.
Christi Griffin, the president of The Ethics Project, wanted this to be different. She wanted to invite mothers of other races to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.
She wanted mothers who had never felt the fear, every single time their son walked outside or drove a car, that he could possibly be killed to hear what that felt like.
Griffin’s son, now grown, had never gotten in trouble nor given her any trouble growing up. But when her son was 14 years old, the family moved into an all-white neighborhood. She took him to the police department to introduce him to the staff. She wanted the officers to know that he belonged there, that he lived there.
When he turned 16, it was time for another talk. Every single time he got into his car to drive, she made him take his license out of his wallet and his insurance card out of the glove compartment.
“I did not want him reaching for anything in the car.”
He graduated from college with a degree in physics.
Marlowe Thomas-Tulloch said that when she noticed her grandson was getting bigger and taller, she laid bare a truth to him: Son, if the police stop you, I need for you to be humble. But I need more than that. I need for you to be prepared to be humiliated.
If they tell you take your hands out of your pockets, take your hands out. Be ready to turn your pockets out. If they tell you to sit down, be prepared to lie down.
You only walk in the street with one boy at a time, she told him.
“What?” her grandson said. In his 17-year-old mind, he hadn’t done anything wrong and nothing was going to happen to him.
“If it’s three or more, you’re a mob,” she said. “That’s how they will see you.”
She started to cry.
“Listen to me,” she begged. “Hear me.”
Finally, she felt him feel her fear.
If they ask you who you are, name your family.
Yes, sir and no, sir. If they are in your face, even if they are wrong, humble yourself and submit yourself to the moment.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Because I love you.”
She told him she would rather pick him up from the police station than identify his body at a morgue.
When her grandson left to go home, she called her daughter to tell her about the conversation. Her daughter asked her what she had said, because her son came home upset, with tears in his eyes.
“I hope I said enough to save his life,” Thomas-Tulloch said. “I’d rather go down giving him everything I got.”
The mothers talked about the times their sons had been stopped in their own neighborhoods because “they fit the description.” They shared the times their sons had come home full of rage and hurt for being stopped and questioned for no reason. And they told the other mothers how often they told their sons to simply swallow the injustice of the moment. Because they wanted them alive, above all.
Amy Hunter, director of racial justice at the YWCA in metro St. Louis, said it’s taken her 10 years to be able to share this story about her son without crying. She didn’t want her white friends to see her cry when she told it. She didn’t want to look weak.
Her four children are now older, but when one of her sons was 12, he decided to walk home from the Delmar Loop in University City where he had met some friends.
He saw a police officer circling him, and he knew. He was wearing Sperrys, a tucked-in polo shirt, a belt. He was 12, and he knew, but he was scared.
He lived five houses away, and he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I knew you were home,” he said to his mom when he finally made it home after being frisked. “I knew I was about to get stopped, and I thought about running home to you.”
His mother froze.
“I forgot to tell him,” she said. “I forgot to tell him: Don’t run. Don’t run or they’ll shoot you.”
Her 12-year-old cried when he told her what had happened and asked if he was stopped because he was black.
“Probably, yeah,” she said.
“I just want to know, how long will this last?” he asked her.
That’s when she started to cry.
“For the rest of your life,” she said.
It doesn’t matter about your college degree, the car you drive, the street you live on, she told the moms in the audience. It’s not going to shield your child like a Superman cape. She admitted that it was difficult to share these painful moments.
Just one of the mothers on the stage asked a single question of the audience. Assata Henderson, who has raised three children, all college graduates, said she called her sons to ask them what they remembered about “the talk” she had given them about how to survive as a black man.
“Mama, you talked all the time,” they said to her.
It made her wonder, she said. She said she wasn’t pointing any fingers, but it made her wonder about the conversations the other mothers were having with their sons, who grow up to be police officers, judges and CEOs.
“You’re the mothers,” she said to the crowd. “What are the conversations you are having with the police officers who harass our children?”
I had a realization the other day that seems obvious in retrospect, but I hadn’t put these two things together before.
I was telling my mom that I’m kind of dreading having a private practice someday because it’ll mean working lots of late nights to accommodate my clients’ schedules and make enough money, and as I know from working 12-8 last year, that’ll wreck my social life. She was like, “So you’ll have a social life on the weekends.” And I’m like, and what, spend every weekday night alone in my apartment because it’s too late to go out and see people? She gave me this knowing look and was like, “Well, hopefully you won’t be *alone*…”
That’s when it hit me that this thing–this whole monogamous couple/nuclear family ideal thing–directly enables work to take over our entire lives. Because, yes, if I had someone living in my house–in my bedroom, even–who prioritizes me higher than anyone else in his (because, let’s face it, it would always be a he in this scenario) life, who doesn’t sleep with or date any other people, who treats his free time as our shared time, who drops plans with friends or family the moment I need him, who convincingly promises to never leave me–if I had someone like that, and if I believed in that fantasy, then yes, I’d be fine working late every night and coming home at 9. I could see my friends on weekends sometimes, but I wouldn’t *need* to because I’d never be lonely or bored.
Because however you look at it, cultivating and maintaining a group of friends and a broader social circle or community takes more effort–especially more *intentional* effort–than cultivating just one person with whom you share your life. When we have to work unreasonable hours just to get by, guess which one’s more likely to fall by the wayside?
No wonder it feels like my like-minded friends and I are constantly wading through waist-deep snowdrifts. It’s not set up to work the way we want it to. Yes, life would be easier if I had someone who is always a few yards (or less) away from me when we’re not at work and who can provide romance, friendship, emotional support, entertainment, household help, financial assistance, AND hot sex (and maybe eventually co-parenting) without me ever needing to seek out other people or even leave the house. But that’s…horrifying.
Remember that the nuclear family ideal (husband/wife/child as the entire family unit) is an aberration of the 20th century. Everyone else in the world for almost all of human history has lived in large groups, either tribes or extended families, usually a blend of both. When a woman married she joined her husband’s family, or he joined hers, but humans have generally always lived in large groups with multiple generations sharing space for all of our history.
Our western experiment with making two people entirely dependent on each other for all of the emotional support normal people get from a large extended family group is part of the reason we’ve got a high divorce rate. One person isn’t enough to sustain another entirely.
I think as well, this is why so many single people (like me!) get so damn LONELY.
I recently bought a house (by myself) and I pay all the bills, buy all the food, ect, because it’s just me that lives here.
And at night, I’m so fucking LONELY. My coupled friends don’t get it, they want some peace and quiet to get away from the kids, or the hubby - and when I say “I’m so bored” they don’t get it.
My ONLY FACE-TO-FACE interaction is at work.
That’s it. If I don’t make the effort to go out at weekends, I see no one.
Sure, I can talk to people on the phone, and I have online friends… but you know, I don’t remember the last time I got a hug?
Yup. I went to a coworker who I’m close to the other day and asked for a hug because I couldn’t remember the last time I touched another human being. Dog cuddles can only take me so far.
Holy shit, it’s what I’ve been saying the whole time. I’m super introverted, but I /need/ people around me. I will go to coffee shops just to talk to the barista and hear people around me, because I get so lonely. I routinely turn into a clingy, touchy-feely person when I’m home because that is the only place I get hugs. Do you know how many times I have become just… absolutely depressed and unhappy, just because I want a fucking hug and there’s no one to hug? There was this admin assistant when I started here and she and I talked a lot and I’d go by her office just to say hi, and she would always, ALWAYS give me a hug. And then she left, and now I don’t get hugs. Which maybe seems like a weird thing to be upset about, but I am, routinely.
People ask me how I put up with having a roommate all the time, and why I don’t just live by myself rather than playing roommate roulette and maybe getting a bad roommate (hasn’t happened so far, though). It’s because I go CRAZY when I live alone. Sure, having the cats around helps, but I seriously DO NOT deal well living by myself. I’ve tried it, and I can handle it for about three weeks to a month, but after that it starts to really wear on me, especially if I’m dealing with a lot of stress or something at school/work. I often joke that I don’t care if I ever get married, but I would be super psyched if someone I really liked (or multiple someones, even better) and got along with wanted to be roommates forever and ever so at least I’d know I wouldn’t be alone.
Right, this. Positive social contact, including friendly touch, is a thing that most-to-all humans very much need. I’m both pretty solitary and pretty good at keeping my chin up even when things aren’t ideal, but when I look back at my life the unhappiest part of it by far was the part where I was most isolated. And I’ve never even had to deal with living alone, so who knows how I’d handle that.
And, honestly, that expectation – on a societal level! – that everyone will find one person and basically build a life around them and only them…like OP said, I find that pretty horrifying. Especially when the dominant socially acceptable alternative is the aforementioned intense loneliness. Good grief.
If we actually had enough space for all of us I’ve said more than once that I could live with my siblings forever. Right now there’s five people and two emotionally best cats living in our three bedroom house so it’s not great.
But with enough room? Sign me up
My sister and her best friend lived next door to each other in their apartment building for a few years and it was great for them. A few nights a week they’d make dinner together or go out and do something. They watched certain shows together, splitting the cost of cable so it was actually affordable. The rest of the time they had their own space and could hang out with their boyfriends whenever. Even their cats went back and forth between the apartments.
Tl;dr I could happily live in the same apartment building with a few of my friends forever.
Lots of my friends get really flabbergasted about the fact I live with Quite A Few people in a large co-op group house like omg that’s so awful how could you stand always having PEOPLE but like… I honestly cannot imagine not living in community? Yes, there is a considerable amount of work and emotional labour needed in order to make group living situations work but there’s also so very much reward from having a support network at home, from not having that whole weird situation of presuming your entire support system is going to be one person (or zero people I honestly plain forget actual basics of life like eating let alone emotional health for days on end if I live By Myself and that is not actually feasible for me.)
So I dunno about Nuclear Family Living, just Surround Yourself With Friends living ftw.
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