The Visceral Fear in Being a Mother to a Black Son
George Floyd called out for his mother as he lay dying. But like so many other Black moms, she couldn’t protect him.
Months before giving birth to my son, I remember lying alone in my bed one night as big, heavy tears streamed down my face. I wept for this world and for the beautiful Black baby who I was about to introduce to it. I wept out of distress and exhaustion for the constant state of trauma that Black people, my people, live in. Most of all, I wept for Black mothers, women like myself, who would bring handsome and talented and lively Black boys into a world that hates them and us.
The killing of George Floyd is a tragic and tangible depiction of this egregious reality. Look at it this way: A racist white officer — a product of systemic racism in America — with his knee placed on the neck of a Black man, applying pressure and restricting his movement, choking the life out of him. And while Floyd was down on the ground, advocating for himself, expressing his unbearable pain in his final moments of life, this 46-year-old Black man cries out for his mother — his mother, who though she undoubtedly did the best she could, could not protect him or save him from a broken system.
