Mother to Son

The Killing of Blackness in America

People frequently ask me if I enjoy traveling. My response is always the same, “I enjoy being places.” On top of the normal anxiety of the tragedy that is possible anytime, anyone gets on an airplane, traveling as a woman in my Black body has become quite a traumatizing experience. The trauma surprises and shakes in moments when it is most unexpected, when you are just out in the world minding your own business and doing your own thing.

In January, the year 2025 of our Lord, only days after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47^th president of the United States, only days into his executive orders and the shock of his racialized policies that 92% of Black women in America knew were sure to come, I was preparing to board an airplane in the state of Georgia. As I walked down the hall towards my gate, I saw a dark-skinned Black boy approaching. He was skipping with joy in his light blue sweat suit as he ate cookies. I noticed that this sweet boy—perhaps in the sixth grade—was accompanied by a white, blond-haired woman. From their loving interactions, one would assume that she was either his mother or a close relative.

Shine Through Your Smile by Michael Aboya

We are good with the visual, so far, right?…concerning unconditional love, and colorblindness, and reconciliation, and MLK’s dream, and how far we’ve come, and can’t we all just get along, and I don’t see color. Well, let me tell you what else I saw. I saw this same Black boy wearing a bright red hat with the white lettering, Make America Great Again (MAGA). I saw this vulnerable Black boy, who looks cute now, but is only a few years away from the people who take up familial space, seeing him as a superpredator. He will go from pet to threat, from superpredator to prey in no time. In a few short years, he will leave his white mother, and he will be all alone.

I mean, who knows, he could become Randall Pearson from This is Us. He could stuff all his questions about his identity and how his life came to be, down into the toes of his feet, and he could work really hard to become accepted in his white world, to not stand out in all his blackness, to overcompensate for not being white enough. He could be blessed to marry a Black woman like Beth, who loves him unconditionally, fiercely, a Black woman who protects him, and who reminds him daily that he is worthy of love, and that he is enough. Perhaps he and his Black wife will have Black children, and they will live happily ever after.

Or perhaps he will become like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a sexual abuser of at least one Black woman. Perhaps, he will grow up to marry a white woman who obstructs justice, while he still holds a key to the land, and perhaps he will go to his grave and that life will be enough for him. Perhaps, he will be like Herman Cain. Perhaps he will embrace all the pleasantries, the false sense of community, and drink all the poisonous red Kool-Aid until he dies from the very thing that they told him was no big deal. And then the community will forget about him, because to them, he was always a dispensable tool. To them, he was always enslaved. And what do you do with enslaved people? You work them until they die, and then you forget and continue writing stories about them and people who look like them, so we all forget.

As a Black woman and a Black mother who was preparing to go on a retreat for rest, my soul could only lament. I lament for the loneliness and the isolation that would come because this Black boy is being formed in relationships that are out of step with the Black community. He is out of step with 92% of Black women, and 78% of Black men who do not ascribe to the MAGA philosophy. For us, the MAGA philosophy, it’s policies, and practices have a clear and calculated racialized agenda.

And apparently, there were millions of voters in these yet to be United States of America who, like this Black boy, were just skipping along eating cookies. Because cookies are appealing to the eye and are good to eat. But most cookies have no nutritional value. If you didn’t know, now you know. It is not just Black and Brown people who will be harmed. The philosophy will negatively impact the most vulnerable among us: to include our elderly and those in need of health care, the poorest among us, the refugee population (you know, those who come to America “the right way,” countless of them who are supported through wonderful Christian organizations like World Relief and World Vision). The philosophy will negatively impact your neighbors, it will weaken our country, our relationships with allies, our creditability on the global stage, and it will impact your pocketbook. So, thanks for the economic vote of confidence.

I lament that this white mother is giving this Black boy cookies that are appealing to the eye, and are good to eat, but the end is certainly death. She doesn’t understand that under her faithful love is toxic poison. She is worse than Mommy Dearest. She is sprinkling that colorless, odorless white poison all over her son’s cookies, and the only way he will ever be free is if she stops leaving her Black flower in the attic.

I lament that he will die of isolation or loneliness because he hates himself or because there is no good Black man who write to him with the honesty, love, and passion that Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his son. He will die if there is no Black man like James Baldwin writing to his nephew telling him to love white folks anyway. He will die of self-loathing, and if they don’t get to him first, he will lynch himself. He will die like strange fruit on the vine, and the people, who are supposed to be “his people” won’t even notice. It will be an isolated incident. It will be unfortunate. It will be because of a mental health crisis. It will always be his fault. My heart breaks for him.

I lament, not that he does not have a Black mother, but rather because he has the worst kind of white one. She can never be Langston Hughes’ mother telling him, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” But history and her commitment to the MAGA philosophy informs me that she is not the woman who will put her life, body, or ideals on the line for the sake of her Black son. No, in her own self-righteousness, self-preservation, and self-care, or perhaps to soothe her own white guilt, she has brought him into her own world. She has not modeled the love or leadership of Immanuel, the one who came down to be with us in our world.

That Black boy will grow up to become a Black man. He deserves a mother who has coached him how to respond when the police pull him over for a busted taillight so perhaps, he doesn’t get shot in the back, because no amount of money that he earns will exempt him from the possibility of that experience. Just ask Tyler Perry. He deserves a mother that does not espouse an ideology and philosophy that goes against his very being. He deserves a mother that will tell him that in this here flesh in America, he does not have a home, but by God’s grace, he can become a good Black man, who makes a home with a family, and builds a community that resembles the now-and-not-yet kingdom. He deserves a mother that is not afraid to tell the truth, one who assures him that she will be with him to love, nurture, and protect until he builds up the stamina to do and sustain that good work. He deserves a mother who cares enough to make her dwelling among a diverse community of Black people, who understands the Black dilemma in the United States. I lament that he does not have it.

I’m continuing the We Will Set Our Hope discussion series with my friends Pastor David Swanson and Latasha Morrison, with a discussion of Latasha’s latest release, Brown Faces, White Spaces: Confronting Systemic Racism to Bring Healing and Restoration. Register to join us and invite a friend.

I’m continuing “The Way” Retreat Series with Part 2, guiding participants through the writing of Dr. Marlena Graves during the weekend of May 8-10, 2025. Registration deadline is April 15, 2025. Visit my speaker website for details and registration about this retreat, and others in the series.

I am hosting two retreats for Black Women Leaders in the Fall/Winter 2025. Registration is open, and details can be found on the B.L.A.C.K. Women’s Leadership Retreat webpage.