For those of you that find the title of the blog difficult to grasp, it is simply how I view life and my opinions on what I have observed. Exactly what a blog is meant for, funnily enough...
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?"
"Yes, sir and no sir" isn't respect, but obedience. And that alone leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even with every other burden and injustice of being Black in America .
2. (I couldn’t track down the actual recipe for the second picture, so I’m just going to assume it’s Chocolate Coffee.)
3. Again, I couldn’t track this one down, but I think it’s an ice cream cake. Here’s ten different recipes for ice cream cakes in exchange for not finding that particular one.
4. The person who originally posted this image didn’t put a source either, so I’m just going to give you a recipe for a cake that looks even better. Hell, I’ll throw in another just to make it even.
5. Double Chocolate Cookie Bars.
6. This cake is supposedly from a restaurant or high-end bakery, but I wasn’t able to find the source or recipe for it. Sorry!
7. I know what these are! York Peppermint Patty Brownies!
8. yeah i’m pretty sure this is just a disassembled oreo smore thing it’s sort of self-explanatory
9. *shifty eyes* I couldn’t find this one either but here make this instead
10. My only guess for these is homemade ding dongs.
“A lot of young girls think that the opposite of fake is rudeness. And just as ugly as fake is, so is saying whatever is on your mind because it’s the truth.”
― Tyra Banks (via psych-quotes)
I'm not sure I understand what this means. Is it asserting that whatever is on one's mind is the truth, and that it is ugly? Is she calling for tact?
I am trying to see things in perspective. My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot have this, because chocolate makes dogs very sick. My dog does not understand this. She pouts and wraps herself around my leg like a scarf and purrs and tries to convince me to give her just a tiny bit. When I do not give in, she eventually gives up and lays in the corner, under the piano, drooping and sad. I hope the universe has my best interest in mind like I have my dog’s. When I want something with my whole being, and the universe withholds it from me, I hope the universe thinks to herself: "Silly girl. She thinks this is what she wants, but she does not understand how it will hurt.
THEORIES ABOUT THE UNIVERSE by Blythe Baird (via modernmethadone)
I look at you and I feel like I don't want anything to ever happen to you. And I know that this is a weakness in me, to assert this need to protect, perhaps buried somewhere in my subconcious, or animal brain. I neglect to consider your strength, or doubt it. But then I consider that all the strength in the world might falter when levied the innumerable evils that this world suffers. If I can save you from something, or at least make it all that much more bearable, maybe I will be strong too. Maybe I crave the strength I see in you. Or maybe with you we can be strong together. Whatever the case may be, forgive me, forget me, do as you will. But before you go, know I have dared believe in strength. And in a moment, I feel that when tomorrow comes, I won't falter. Thank you.
stormborns
dededos
gummygunk
izzy806
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
jacobvanloon
areudirty
