new orleans born and bred. clark atlanta university educated. family means everything. sports entertain me. music soothes me. knowledge sustains me. changing lives moves me. not all who wander are lost.......
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 sâŚ
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 didnât 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.
Griffinâs 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 hadnât done anything wrong and nothing was going to happen to him.
"If itâs three or more, youâre a mob," she said. "Thatâs 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.
"Iâm 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. "Iâd rather go down giving him everything I got."
The mothers talked about the times their sons had been stopped in their own neighborhoods because âthey fit the description.â 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 itâs taken her 10 years to be able to share this story about her son without crying. She didnât want her white friends to see her cry when she told it. She didnât 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 hadnât 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: Donât run. Donât run or theyâll 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.
Thatâs when she started to cry.
"For the rest of your life," she said.
It doesnât matter about your college degree, the car you drive, the street you live on, she told the moms in the audience. Itâs 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 âthe talkâ 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 wasnât 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.
"Youâre the mothers," she said to the crowd. "What are the conversations you are having with the police officers who harass our children?"
Maybe this is a crazy question, but how did Europeans know what Africans looked like? I know that some of the paintings here are of North Africans/Middle Easterners, but others clearly depict people born south of the Sahara. I've heard of Prester John but I never imagined that medieval Europeans were aware that Prester John would have had brown skin. Am I missing something?
Like. There are a lot of things I could say here. But Iâm just going to do my best to answer your question, and the answer is either very simple or very complicated, depending on your current point of view.
1. âTheyâ knew what people with brown skin looked like because people with brown skin had been there literally THE ENTIRE TIME. Some (and father back, ALL) of âthemâ had brown skin themselves.
2. âPeople with Brown Skinâ and âEuropeansâ are not separate and mutually exclusive groups.
3. No matter how far back you go, the mythical time that youâre looking for, when all-white, racially and culturally isolated Europe was ârealâ, will continue to recede from your grasp until it winkles out the like imaginary place it is.
We can just keep going back. In every area, from all walks of life, rich and poor, kings and peasants, artists and iconoclasts, before there were countries and continents, before there were white people.
Russia, 1899:
Switzerland, c. 1800:Â [fixed link here]
Netherlands, 1658:
Poland, 1539:
Germany, 1480s:
Spain, 1420s:
France, 1332:
Scotland, England, France, 1280s:
France, 1220s:
England, 1178:
Belgium, 1084:
Greece, c. 1000:
Spain, 850s:
Throughout Europe, 800s-500s:
England, c. 300 AD:
Scotland, c. 100 AD:
Italy, 79 AD:
Greece, 170Â B.C.:
Greece, 300Â B. C.:
Greece, 400s B.C.
Greece, 500s B.C.:
Egypt, 1200s B.C.:
Crete (Minoan), 1600Â B.C.:
Crete (Minoan), early 2000s B.C.:
Romania, 34,000Â B.C.:
The time when âEVERYONEâ in Europe was White does not exist. They knew what people with brown skin looked like because they were there. They knew what âAfricansâ looked like because they were there, and they werenât âtheyâ, they were us, or you. I think what youâre missing is something that never existed.
If the police stop you out of the blue in the middle of a music festival and start questioning you, what do you do? Follow these 5 steps from the Festival Lawyer.
Be just, and justify your actions
Breathe deep and walk upright
Lead and never follow
Love the people, be of the people
Humble yourself and pray
History remembers Kings
Tell me what you know about dreams?
What you know about having faith in something you can't see?
Tell me, how much do you believe?
What you know about feeling something that you can't even touch?
What you know about smelling something that you can't even breathe?
When the world drives you out, and your gas tank is on E, and all the faith that you had just ain't all the faith that you need?
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