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How
can any parent - how can any black parent - bring a child into this
world, this America?
It
is a question that many people have asked themselves since the
November election, as hate and intolerance, it seems, have overtaken
the political discourse. And those who would divide people, scapegoat
those based on race and religion, are running the government and
turning their bigotry into law.
My
wife Sarah and I have been reflecting on what it means to bring a
child of color into a country fraught with danger, where her safety
in not guaranteed. On Oct. 24, 2016, only days shy of the election,
we gave birth to our daughter Eliana. She announced herself two
months early. Eliana was ready and didn’t care what anyone had
to say about it. She was only 2 ½ pounds at birth, but feisty,
a real fighting spirit that belied her fragility. She spent two
months in the hospital, and came home just in time for the holidays.
Who could have asked for a better gift? Certainly not I.
When
Eliana’s brother Micah was born in 2009, America was a
different place - or so it seemed. The first black president was
still brand new, and for many, the euphoria still hadn’t worn
off. While some people proclaimed America was now a post-racial
society and announced that racism was history, others knew better.
Yet, one cannot deny the potent symbolism of having a black man as
president, and what it meant for your child to see someone who looks
like him in the White House.
Yet,
how did we find ourselves with a president who serves as a role model
for children of color one day, to another, quite different president
who frightens said children, places them in danger, and threatens to
do harm to their parents the next?
The
fact of the matter is that the country never was a safe haven for
those of a darker hue. African-American history has been rife with
profound yet infrequently acknowledged trauma. The kidnapping, the
enslavement and forced labor, the rape and lynching have been etched
in our DNA, only compounded by our present-day struggles, the blatant
injustices that persist alongside the more subtle, nuanced, yet
equally damaging microaggressions. And struggling for progress and
racial justice always was a matter of taking one step forward and two
steps back.
But
in spite of it all, there is joy. Joy, because we survived, we are
still here, and we are not going anywhere. We find comfort in God and
in community. Even in the belly of the slave ship, that floating
dungeon of horrors - in that damnable journey across the Middle
Passage, where half of those millions of souls never made it across
the Atlantic - there was community. We never lost our humanity nor
our ability to live, to help others, and to love.
Black
joy has come through our protest, our decision to envision a better
life for ourselves and our children, and an insistence on accepting
life on our own terms.
In
the midst of the Civil War, as my family oral history goes, Henry
Whaley, my great-great grandfather, was an infant wrapped in his
mother Clarissa’s apron and tied to her back. Clarissa and her
husband Daniel fled from the plantation in Pineville, South Carolina,
to Charleston, along with a band of other self-liberated slaves,
swimming across the river and dredging through the swamps to escape
from the slave patrols. With the catchers approaching, Henry cried
out. Clarissa had to decide whether to kill her baby, as the others
agreed, to avoid attracting the slave catchers. Instead, she nursed
her baby from her breast to save him, and save everyone else in the
process. Clarissa decided to live life and fight on her own terms.
Today,
African Americans, like so many others, are navigating through
uncertain times, with threats to our safety, our rights, and our very
freedom. But hasn’t that always been the case? Yet, amidst the
struggle there is joy in knowing we will beat this. We got this. We
are doing it for our children, as we teach them how to fight against
“unjust laws” as Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say, and
build the multicultural society we are to become. And there is no
greater joy than this.
This commentary was originally published by whyy.org
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