The Anxiety of Parenting While Black

“Our freedom of speech is freedom of death
We got to fight the powers that be.” -Chuck D

A few years ago, my youngest son and I were shopping for clothes. Most of the time we shop online because malls are terrible places. And they’re even worse when shopping with a teenager. Especially a teenager with long legs, man-size feet, and expensive taste.

My son’s go-to app for clothes back then was an app called GOTit. It was kind of like a young person’s Pinterest meets Instagram meets bootleg clothing street vendors. On it, he found a shirt that was a parody of the Warner Brother's logo and the words:

"If you see da police
Warn a Brother"

Dope, isn’t it? At least that was my initial reaction. It’s clever. I like that. I envisioned (Black) men in the barbershop giving my son dap and laughing at his shirt. But before I could say, “Put it in the cart,” fear crept over me. My initial vision changed to something sinister. I started to imagine my son hanging out with friends and being targeted by the police.

“Why do you need to be warned,” the cop would ask. “What did you do?”
Any answer my son would give would be interpreted as disrespect. Then, the next thing you know, he’s arrested, beaten, or worse. All because of that shirt.

My therapist would probably say that I was catastrophizing. According to medicalnewstoday.com, “Catastrophizing is a way of thinking called a ‘cognitive distortion.’ A person who catastrophizes usually sees an unfavorable outcome to an event and then decides that if this outcome does happen, the results will be a disaster.” And, perhaps, I was… a little. It can be hard to distinguish what part is disordered thinking caused by anxiety and what is a rational fear caused by living in a disordered society. Seemingly benign interactions with the police can be deadly for Black children and that’s enough to give any Black mama anxiety. It’s a type of anxiety you can’t Zoloft away. The threat is too real. But it’s a threat that exists no matter what my son is wearing.

My son is a tall, brown-skinned boy; intelligent and confident. He will most likely experience police harassment in his life. My disordered thinking was not that he could be targeted by police but that a shirt would be the reason. The gag is that white supremacy, institutional racism, and personal prejudice don’t need a reason to terrorize Black youth. They are the reasons. My honey said, “As the shirt suggests…unless he stops being Black, he’s a target anyway. This just makes him a target with humor.”

We bought the shirt. White supremacy’s not getting the last laugh today.

Categories: : Wellness