The Challenges of an African American Mother

As a mother, when my children were small, I would always talk to them about safety. I
taught them never talk to or take anything from strangers, never wander too far from the safety
of the front yard, and always look before crossing the road. I made sure to cover as many rules
of safety with my children as possible to create awareness. However, as an African American
mother of teen age and adult children and because of the constant fear of harassment by law
enforcement of African American youth, racism from peers in the public school system, and
the importance of maintaining a positive cultural identity, I am pressured to talk to my children
about how to cope with racism and the internalized oppression that it causes.
Because of the constant fear of harassment by law enforcement of African American
youth, I continually speak with my children about what to do or how to react if they are
stopped by a white police officer. It’s no secret that young African American youth are more
likely stopped, profiled, and sometimes murdered by white police officers than any other race
of people. I’ve always respected and regarded law enforcement to be noble men and protectors
of the community, but as an African American, especially an African American mother, I

question the integrity of white police officers with a great dilemma. I’ve witnessed via social
media, news broadcasts, Internet, and cell phone recordings many unarmed African American
youth with their hands lifted in the air, posing no threat of endangerment to the white police
officers who shoot them down like animals and murder them with no repercussion or
indictment from the law. As a mother concerned for the safety and protection of my children, I
don’t trust that the law provides protection without discrimination to children of color and to
the communities of our youth as they do the communities of their white counterparts.
Because most school personnel are not typically trained to be culturally sensitive to the
complex needs of African American students, often African American students are
misunderstood, unfairly treated, and given harsher discipline than other students. Talking to
my children about how to deal with racism from school administrators and some of their white
peers in public schools is a prevalent conversation, among others, that I discuss with my
children. There are times when my children have come home from school very distraught
because of disciplinary measures taken with them by school personnel that seemed to be more
reflective of their race than their character. Seventy-one percent of all suspended minority
students are suspended for nonviolent offenses and things such as breaking school polices.
For instance, my daughter attended her first year of high school at Lebanon High
School in Wilson County, Tennessee. The first couple of weeks she came home from school in
tears every day. My daughter had always been a respectful outstanding student who had never
been in trouble before. She was given ISS (In School Suspension) for breaking the school’s
dress code for wearing a skirt a little above her knee with stretch pants. A white teacher
standing in the hallway while she was changing class wrote her up for breaking dress code
policy. My daughter made sure she was conscious of what she wore from then on; however,

she was aware of the same teacher allowing several white students to break the same dress
code or worse. Sometimes she noticed that some white students dressed in a very provocative
way with very short skirts and scantily clad spaghetti strap tops, which was clearly against the
school’s dress code policy, and walked pass that same teacher every day without any
disciplinary actions being made. My daughter clearly felt a sense of bias coming from that
teacher. After witnessing this situation go on for weeks, she and a couple of her African
American friends who had similar experiences, deliberately broke the dress code to see what
would happen. They all received write-ups from that teacher and received ISS.
Racism can cause African American children to become internally suppressed. Of all
the disparities in the African American communities, discrimination has caused far more
complex issues; therefore, I feel the need to teach my children the importance of maintaining a
positive cultural identity. Helping them to understand their roots will help them to be proud of
who they are. Slavery was an evil enforced upon African Americans that stripped them of their
identity and the family structure that they were so familiar with. Being forced to survive in a
new world so unfamiliar, diminished to believing they were inferior, and treated with less
regard than animals, the African American culture has suffered a brutality that has caused
disaster to the structural foundation of family and values.
In conclusion, as an African American mother concerned for the safety and well-being
of my children, it’s important to me to talk with my children and help them deal with racism
whether from law enforcement, peers, or administration in public schools. I also teach them the
importance of a positive cultural identity since they all are factors that have affected the lives
of my children, as well as the lives of many other African American children.