Black Moms Tell White Moms About the Race Talk
Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a diverse crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly strangers. They were going to talk about something they didn't normally share with their white friends or colleagues. It was about to get real in that room.
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Christi Griffin, the president of The Ethics Project, wanted this to be different. She wanted to invite mothers of other races to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.
She wanted mothers who had never felt the fear, every single time their son walked outside or drove a car, that he could possibly be killed to hear what that felt like.
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Marlowe Thomas-Tulloch said that when she noticed her grandson was getting bigger and taller, she laid bare a truth to him: Son, if the police stop you, I need for you to be humble. But I need more than that.
I need for you to be prepared to be humiliated.
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The mothers talked about the times their sons had been stopped in their own neighborhoods because "they fit the description." They shared the times their sons had come home full of rage and hurt for being stopped and questioned for no reason. And they told the other mothers how often
they told their sons to simply swallow the injustice of the moment. Because they wanted them alive, above all.
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Her 12-year-old cried when he told her what had happened and asked if he was stopped because he was black.
"Probably, yeah," she said.
"I just want to know, how long will this last?" he asked her.
That's when she started to cry.
"For the rest of your life," she said.
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