(Content warning for racism, sexual assault discussion, and violence. If these are triggering to you, please consider if you are in a space to read farther before you go on.)
"OMGOMGOMGOMG" That was the subject line of the Facebook message from my then-14-year-old daughter. The date was 26 November, 2011. The rest of the message?
http://deviantwear.deviantart.com/...
XMAS Ideas maybe? For me? Especially the hoodie
[♥] Love you!
A simple holiday request message from a teenager who knows what style she likes. So simple, right? And it was, for privileged me. Why should I care what she wears, so long as it is clean and won't get her arrested? In fact, we had a deal: She got good grades, stayed clean and had clothes the same, and had an active social life. In return, I would not police her choice of hair or clothing color, cut, or style. She was keeping up her end of the deal, and she made it easy to keep up mine.
That was four months ago.
I always knew that her clothes would not keep her safe from predators. I already knew that rape respects no gender, no appearance, no age. She is strong and savvy and not afraid to defend herself, capable of a metal-bending scream. She watches crime dramas and true crime and knows the world is not always a nice place to the innocent. I have always told her to educate herself, and that I have faith in her intelligence and ability to make good choices given good information. I have made myself available to talk about anything.
We are White. She has dyed her naturally walnut-colored hair black. Her preferred clothes are jeans and a hoodie. She loves to walk with her hands in the front pockets, listening to her iPod.
I am so privileged that I am only now seeing the luxury I have had. I never once worried about my daughter's clothes being a motivator for a shooting.
I am keenly aware that the hoodie is irrelevant to the real story of a young man killed before he had a chance to live. But it is the excuse on which some are seizing, and so I gave it a moment's consideration, and it scared the hell out of me. My black-haired daughter, face obscured by the hood as it so often is, hands in pockets (as if carrying a weapon, maybe?), walking through a neighborhood...suspicious?
Yes, it is ridiculous on the face of it. But for the first time, I really got the shadow of a shadow of a shadow of a glimpse of what Black mothers and fathers feel every. Single. Day. No matter what their children wear, no matter what they are doing, however innocent, however mundane. No excuse is apparently too small to kill a Black child.
I don't even pretend to understand. I am not Trayvon Martin, and cannot claim that. But one of my Black friends posted a picture of their toddler, wearing his little NCAA hoodie, paci in mouth, looking at the camera. Will he be next? Will his big brother? Will his father, a gentle and kind former co-worker who has never spoken a harsh word in his life? No, I cannot pretend to understand the horror and the fear and the conversations these parents have been forced to have with their children, all of their children, for years and years and years. I cannot pretend to grasp the injustice of this, the wrongness.
But I got a shadow, and it brought me weeping to my knees. They are killing Black babies. Trayvon could have been one of the kids at my older daughter's daycare when she was young. He was the right age to be her boyfriend, perhaps.
So you better believe I have signed the petitions and written and called. Now I am checking my privilege and sitting down and listening. I promise to put any defensiveness aside to anyone who chooses (because no one is obligated, I know that for damn sure, and I cannot even imagine how tired this must make people) to help me reflect and figure out how to help next. I have been guilty of not realizing my privilege, but I darn sure do now. Because my daughter loves hoodies and they are killing Black babies. And a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of a glimpse is enough.
EDIT: PS and for the record... I've gone through and googled on "Racism 101" and done a lot of reading and thinking since this story first broke and I was stopped in my tracks by the injustice. I am not asking for Racism 101 or for PoC to educate me - that's what Google is for, and that's all on me. I am asking for places to engage in community work and ways to take concrete actions to help. Racism 101 sites are short on practical "what needs doing now" - I figured this is a good place to ask! Thank you so much for the kind comments I have received, on the diary and in Kosmail.