Raising a young black man today brings with it fear of the burden he will carry when he comes of age, but also the hope he’ll have the tools to help effect change, the CBC’s Asha Tomlinson writes.
I waited to find out the sex of my baby. I wanted it to be a surprise. Then the day finally came, and my husband Ryan said, “It’s a boy!” I was both overjoyed and terrified.
Overjoyed because he was healthy and I had heard wonderful stories about “mama’s boys.” I was so looking forward to creating that nurturing, loving bond with my little man.
Terrified because I completely understand the kind of burden he’ll have to carry when he comes of age as a young black man in this world.
I heard these stories from my father, and I’ve seen it first hand with my brother, Imamu.
When my brother was a teenager in the early 1990s, living in Toronto’s eastern suburb of Scarborough, he would drive to our corner store to get candy and pop all the time. That is until he started to get stopped by police. They would question him, asking where he was going, why he was out at night.
It happened so much that he told my mother. She went with him one night and sat in the back seat.
An officer pulled him over, and my mom proceeded to wind down the back window and ask, “What’s the problem here, officer?” He fumbled and mumbled and said something about my brother’s tail light and gave him a ticket. My mom took the car to a mechanic. There was nothing wrong with the tail light.
I have never forgotten that incident. Neither has my mom.
My brother is now living in California and has had several interactions with police there, too. He’s an emergency physician and was on his way home from a night shift in the ER.
He was followed for 20 minutes by a police cruiser and stopped at gunpoint inside his gated community. He was forced onto the ground and searched. After finding his lab coat and stethoscope, the officer released him. He said, “Oh, you’re a doctor.” My brother said, “Yes.” The officer said, “Sorry.”
That happened more than a decade ago, but for our family, it feels like yesterday.
Case after case
Hearing and seeing case after case, year after year, of anti-black brutality has chipped away at my heart and my hope that change is coming.
Numerous black