We don’t watch the news. We haven’t in years—I subscribe to a couple of online newspapers, but there’s no TV in our house blaring the nightly news like there was when I was growing up. This means my children are shielded from a lot of the daily headlines, and that used to feel like a good choice.
But this weekend, my kids spent the night with their grandparents, who are nightly news watchers. And the next day, we’d been home less than an hour when Nathan told me he saw a white police officer kneel on the back of a black man’s neck and the news said he did that for eight minutes and that the black man died even though he kept saying he couldn’t breathe and why would anyone do that to a person but especially a police officer whose job it is to protect people?
I don’t have words for all of what I felt in that moment, but I am honest enough to say I was uncomfortable. With the baldness of the question. With the weight of the answer. And with my choice to vault my role as shield into one my top priorities as a mother. Like any mother, I have hopes that my children will be world-changers. But, if I want them to change it, first I need to be honest about the condition of the world we’re handing them.
Slowly and haltingly, I explained the story behind what Nathan had seen on TV. I reminded him of the stories we’ve read before and the things that have happened in history that we’ve talked about, and explained their connection to Mr. Floyd. Nathan’s eyes grew wide and his hand covered his mouth and when he learned the very worst we as humans are capable of, he shook his head in disappointment.
“Is there anything we can do, Mom?” he wanted to know.
“There is,” I said. “We can do better.”
Right now, for me, better looks like listening. Listening to understand. To learn what I don’t know and unlearn some of what I think I do. To pay attention to my posture when I listen, and when I stiffen or recoil … that’s where I press in because I’m finding that where it’s most uncomfortable is where I need to do the most unpacking.
Better looks like pushing for the most honest version of reality. Not the one that sweeps the darkness under the rug—the one where we “don’t see race” or “raise our children to be colorblind.” But also not the cynical one—the one that shrugs as the world burns and says “it’s not like I can change it, anyway.”
The honest truth is that we’re capable of great and terrible things. But boil that down, and we’re capable. We can do something—we can listen, speak, act, love.
It is this way, but it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Or at least, this is what I tell my children.
If you want to join me in listening, these are a few of the voices I’m paying attention to:
The Conscious Kid
Be The Bridge
Black Coffee with White Friends
Austin Channing Brown
Osheta Moore
Sam Collier
Tanorria Askew
Patricia A. Taylor
Luvvie Ajayi Jones
Layla F. Saad