Stifling-Comfort

Dear White Mom,

You are making parenting difficult for me.
I am a black mother living in a red state.
Mothering black children in a white town.
Black. White. Red.
Colors are not so pretty, after all.
The urge to suppress my anger is making me angry – injustice has a way of boiling one’s blood.

So far, I’ve been the one to experience the bunt of racist ignoramuses. The boutique owner didn’t see me walk in or hear the bell chime, but somehow she greeted the white woman who walked in behind me. At a book club, a white woman referred to the main characters, Mable and Jumpin’ from the book, Where the Crawdads Sing, as ‘THE BLACKS’. I shifted in my seat and my spirit. At a local grocery store, a young cashier took my driver’s license, looked me in the eyes, and placed my card on the conveyor. Am I invisible?

The Blacks and the Invisibles are now my children.
Yesterday, I dropped my smiling children off at a church’s youth night and picked them up, sad and broken-hearted. My social butterfly retreated to the stifling, comfort of the bathroom walls. And when I knocked on the closed -white- door, she opened it with red, swollen eyes.
“It’s hard, Mommy. Not only am I a new kid, but we are also the only black kids. Children walked past us to be with their friends, to be with people who look like them.”

Black. White. Red.
Colors are vibrant vibrations of energy.
How did socially constructed ideas dehumanize people, separate humanity, and destroy our ability to see people beyond the surface?
Don’t tell me about “the help” that is “like family.” Or share photos of your “one black friend” who’d never sat on your sofa. Show me… better yet, show your children how to love by welcoming and loving others who are different in color and diverse in knowledge. Be a point of light.

Here’s to hard, holy work.

Kadine Christie