How I became a Black Mother

Racism had never really touched me personally until my son grew up and was no longer the cute little boy with the buzz haircut holding my hand. He was now a dark-skinned man, often mistaken for being black, and quite likely to be perceived as a threat. This was new to me.

As a South Asian woman, I had never felt my brown skin to be working against me. I listened to others talk about the subtle and overt racism they experienced but for the most part, it washed over me. I was often mistaken for a medical doctor and my mischievous self usually just played along. Besides, there was a certain privilege associated with being a doctor, regardless of the color of your skin.

Things began to change as my son grew up. His dark skin attracted all sorts of comments. I began to notice that what many saw first, was the color of his skin and not what he was doing, like helping to set up for an event or taking down and cleaning up after it. Some seemed to think nothing of coming up to me and saying things like “Can he get any darker than that?” 

Still, I laughed it off thinking, this was the exception and not the norm. But I also often caught myself wondering, “How am I expected to respond to comments like this? Why do they think it’s OK to say things like this? Why is that what they notice first and not the fact that he is helping out when others have long left?”

And then another milestone – the drivers’ license!  Overnight, as my son proudly brandished his newly acquired drivers’ license and started driving around alone, I became a black mom. Every time he took the car out on his own, I was frozen with fear - the same fears I had heard expressed so many times before but had dismissed as background noise. I was petrified of him being stopped by cops and not knowing where to place his hands. I had nightmares of him reaching into his pocket for his wallet and suffering the consequences.

I called up the insurance company and asked them to reissue the insurance cards with both his name and mine. I was not taking any chances. If he was stopped, I wanted him to be able to show some proof that he had a right to be driving what was at that time, a relatively new car.  I had heard about “The Talk” and knew vaguely what it was. Now I scoured the internet and educated myself and then gave “The Talk” to my reluctant son, who of course thought I was being paranoid. When he organized a project to collect new socks for the homeless and wanted to go out at night to pick up the sock donations from donors, I stopped him and told him that he would have to do it in the daylight. No way was I letting him drive slowly around the neighborhood, at night, in his stupid hoodie, looking for addresses and house numbers.

We had and continue to have many an argument about my paranoia and his belief that that all is well, people are good, and nothing is going to happen ‒ not in our neighborhood, not where we live. I often ask myself, “Where does he get off thinking like this? Doesn’t he listen to/read the news? Does he think being a seminarian protects him in some way?”

And yet it gives me hope, that he has such a strong belief in the goodness of people – a hope that continues to grow as I see young people of all stripes standing up for what they believe is right and just. 

I also see hope in the fact that I too am changing. I am finally beginning to understand what I had so easily dismissed before. I finally know and feel some of the pain of black mothers!