Black identity for Will is tough in a place like Minnesota. Just finding the visible evidence of your existence can be hard to come by sometimes. To see yourself reflected in others. Remember, I’m a visual person. So is my son. To be blunt, the spectrum of Blackness here is limited. Period. There’s no right or wrong in that spectrum as others would have us believe, just difference. So, when you are looking for role models, wanting to try on different identities as teenagers do, what society leaves for him is very two-dimensional.
I have been my son’s cultural touchstone until now. But my relevance is waning. Friends and the internet are starting to outpace me. He finds comfort in the stereotypes that I ran away from. He wears his Black baller identity like a suit of armor he polishes every night. The language, the clothes, the mannerisms have been groomed and well cared for. But he’s changing into a young man, and I’m more anxious than ever. I still want the world to see the Will that I see.
As all mothers know, our children’s trying on of personas can be annoying. But as a Black mom with a Black son, I’m keenly aware that all personas are not created equally. Certain personas can invite misinterpretations and, in worst-case scenarios, can prove deadly.
Will shares just about everything with me. He gets so excited telling me when people think he’s older because that means he’ll soon be driving, and people will be forced to take him more seriously. I, on the other hand, can only think that as an older Black boy he will increasingly be unfairly judged a potential threat by some — a dangerous stereotype he has yet to grasp.
We argue, for instance, about him wearing a silken bonnet he sleeps in when he sometimes steps out in public. He says Black people do it all the time. He doesn’t understand my concern that the look may draw unwanted attention. He thinks I worry too much. My question to him is why you need to wear a bonnet outside as a show of Blackness.
We continually have these sorts of fights. He requests to do, eat, wear things that often fit stereotypes of Blackness. And I challenge him in his language: “Why you so thirsty?” I tell him that he is the culture and that there is no need to press so hard.
