How to raise a black son in America

Growing up, I didn't always
understand why

my parents made me follow
the rules that they did.

Like, why did I really
have to mow the lawn?

Why was homework really that important?

Why couldn't I put jelly beans
in my oatmeal?

My childhood was abound
with questions like this.

Normal things about being a kid

and realizing that sometimes,

it was best to listen to my parents

even when I didn't exactly understand why.

And it's not that they didn't want
me to think critically.

Their parenting always sought
to reconcile the tension

between having my siblings and I
understand the realities of the world,

while ensuring that we never accepted
the status quo as inevitable.

I came to realize that this,
in and of itself,

was a very purposeful form of education.

One of my favorite educators,

Brazilian author and scholar Paulo Freire,

speaks quiete explicitly about the need
for edcuation to be used

as a tool for critical awakening

and shared humanity.

In his most famous book,

"Pedagogy of the Oppresed",

he states, "No one can be
authentically human

while he prevents others from being so."

I've been thinking a lot
about this lately,

this idea of humanity,

and specifically, who in this world
is afforded the privilege

of being perceived as fully human.

Over the course of
the past several months,

the world has watched as
unarmed black men, and women,

have had their lives taken at the hands
of the police and vigilante.

These events and all that
has transpired after them

have brought me back to my own childhood

and the decisions that
my parents made about

about raising a black boy in America

that growing up, I didn't always
understand

in the way that I do now.

I think of how hard it must have been,

how profoundly unfair it must have felt

for them to feel like
they had to strip away

parts of my childhood

just so that I could come home at night.

For example, I think of how one night,

when I was around 12-years-old
on an overnight field trip

to another city,

my friends and I bought Super Soakers

and turned the hotel parking lot
into our own

into our own water-filled battle zone.

We hid behind cars,

running through the darkness that
laid between the streetlights,

boundless laughter ubiquitous
across the pavement.

But within ten minutes,

my father came outside,

grabbed my by my forearm

and lead me unto our room
with an unfamiliar grip.

Before I could say anything,

tell him how foolish he had
made me look in front of my friends,

he derided me for being so naive.

Looked me in the eye,

fear consuming his face,

and said, "Son, I'm sorry,

but you can't act the same
as your white friends.

You can't pretend to shoot guns.

You can't run around in the dark.

You can't hide behind anything
other than your own teeth."

I know now how scared he must have been,

how easily I could have fallen
into the empty of the night,

that some man would mistake this water

for a good reason to wash
all of this away.

These are the sorts of messages
I've been inundated with

my entire life:

always keep your hands where
they can see them,

don't move too quickly,

take off your hood when the sun goes down.

My parents raised me and my siblings
in an armor of advice,

an ocean of alarm bells so someone
wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs,

so that they wouldn't make
a memory of this skin.

So that we could be kids,

not casket or concrete.

And it's not because they thought it
would make us better than anyone else

it's simply because they wanted
to keep us alive.

All of my black friends were raised
with the same message:

the talk, given to us when we
were old enough

to be mistaken for a nail ready
to be hammered to the ground,

when people made our melanin
synonymous with something to be feared.

But what does it do to a child,

to grow up knowing that you
cannot simply be a child?

That the whims of adolescence
are too dangerous for your breath,

that you cannot simply be curious,

that you are not afforded the luxury
of making a mistake,

that someone's implicit bias
might be the reason

you don't wake up in the morning.

But this cannot be what defines us.

Because we have parents that
raised us to understand

that our bodies weren't meant
for the backside of a bullet,

but for flying kites and jumping rope

and laughing until our stomachs burst.

We had teachers who taught us
how to raise our hands

in class, and not just
to signal surrender

and that the only thing
we should give up

is the idea that we aren't worthy
of this world.

So when we say that black lives matter,

it's not because others don't,

it's simply because we must affirm
that we are worthy

of existing without fear

when so many things
tell us that we are not.

I want to live in a world where my son
will not be presumed "guilty"

the moment he is born,

where a toy in his hand is not mistaken
for anything other than a toy.

And I refuse to accept that we can't
build this world into something new,

some place where a child's name
doesn't have to be

written on a t-shirt or a tombstone,

where the value of someone's life
isn't determined

by anything other than the fact
that they had lungs,

a place where every single one
of us can breathe.

Thank you.

(Applause)