I am afraid of many things.
Things like walking down the street at night or leaving things in my car when I park in the street. Big things like moving into a city (any city) or traveling alone.
I hold my fears closely to me. They were passed down from generations to generations. My own family heirlooms.
When you’re Black in America, fear sometimes feel like love. It is as constant as affirmation and it keeps us safe. The anxiety, we think, is a natural side effect of having people who love us.
When I was in college,
I once saw a fight break out between two drunk men in a hookah bar. The men came towards me and I ran away. When I looked back, my three white friends were standing and watching. I ran to them quickly and said “we need to go now, the cops are on their way” and the first response I got was “Why are you so scared?”
For the next 15 minutes they watched the fight while I watched them. They were not worried. The cops came and didn’t speak to us at all. They laughed at me running for months, thinking my reaction didn’t match the situation.
In high school,
I walked out of school at the end of the day to a large crowd. I was a really quiet freshman and I figured they were all friends so I looked down and squeezed past the crowd to get to my bus. The crowd broke and I looked up to see two Black boys fighting in the clearing. One of their girlfriends was pregnant and looking on in tears. As I tried to get away, the police broke through the crowd, cuffed the boys and sprayed the onlookers with pepper spray. I called my mother and she came to get me.
I told my mom, I did exactly what she had taught me; I tried to run away. I couldn’t make it past the group before the cops came to break up the crowd. She believed me. My eyes burned slightly from the pepper spray
I am thankful for these fears.
I polish them off when the situation calls for it, telling my friends “not to be out too late and call me if you’re walking down a dark street” yelling at them when they don’t wear coats in the winter for fear of pneumonia (“you know, pneumonia kills” I hear my grandmother in my voice). It is these fears that have kept me aware of myself on a white backdrop.
I wonder what love-centered parenting looks like for Black parents. I wonder if it is possible when women are getting gunned down because their phone was dead and they knocked asking for help and men getting gunned down in front of their loved ones when reaching for ID. I wonder if those Black kids who act “too white” (we all know them) were just handed less familial fears and therefore walk with an airiness many of us can’t even begin to understand.
I may never find out. The fear of mothering a Black child is often too scary a thought.