The Fear of Being a Mother with a Black Son

There are too many names that we know all too well, Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Oscar Grant, Freddie Gray, and not because of a sport that they played or a cure for cancer that they may have one day discovered, but for reasons that no one should have to be remembered for. This is the short list to an ever-growing issue here in America. Using data compiled by Fatal Encounters, created by Nevada-based journalist D. Brian Burghart in 2018, 1 in 1,000 black boys and men will be killed by a police officer in comparison to the 39 out of 100,000 white boys and men that will be killed by police. And unfortunately, these numbers do not just stop rising at higher rates for black boys and men, but also at higher rates for all people of color; Native Americans and Latinx, in comparison to their white counterparts.

I fear for my son’s life EVERYDAY. The beautiful black skin that adorns his bones is seen as a threat, when to me it signifies his beauty and his strength. It pains me that I must teach him how to interact with the police and how to be aware of the fears of white people when he is in their presence. I see the brilliant, young mind who tinkers daily with anything that he can find around the house that can be repurposed. At six years old, my son tells me that he wants to be an architect and engineer, and I tell him that he already is. I see the creative spark in his eye, I watch the way he lights up after completing a project and I smile. My heart is full knowing that my husband and I created such a creative, loving, independent human being, and then I go on social media.

I go on social media and I am bombarded with news articles of George Floyd, videos of George Floyd, pictures of George Floyd, memes about George Floyd, and even worse, the last words of George Floyd. Imprinted in my mind now is the careless, nonchalant way in which a white officer sat with his knee on George Floyd’s neck, a technique that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said is against department regulations.

Black America is waiting for charges to be filed. We are waiting for the family to hire Benjamin Crump and lose the case. We are waiting to be told that although the procedure of placing one’s knee in the back of a handcuffed man’s neck, that the officers are found “Not Guilty” and be allowed to continue with their lives.

Black America will take to the streets shouting, “No justice, no peace and ‘Justice, when do we want it? Right now!’” And President Obama will make a speech about how unjustly African Americans are still being treated and it will be the band-aid that the black community will need to cover up the freshest cut of injustice, while the Amy Cooper’s of the world continue to tout their white privilege while calling the police on a black man for simply asking her to put a lease on her dog.

What is justice in America? Is it in the legal system that will charge a black man and a white man with the same crime yet give them completely different sentences? Is it in the justification that when white people react in fear to black men and boys that gives them grounds for taking the life of an innocent human being?

My son is not 3/5 of a human being. I am not 3/5 of a human being. We breathe, we bleed, we feel, we love, and we fear. We are fearful of the power in our white counterpart’s words. Without video footage to capture our innocence, we will always be the perpetrator instead of the victims of systemic racism that runs through the fabric of America. We will always have to defend our blackness. But we are right, there is no justice for us and there is no peace because we live everyday in fear; outwardly or inwardly; there is fear.

Nerra Muhammad is a mother, an educator in Baltimore City Schools and host of The I Call Her Queen Podcast show. May 28, 2020