How to raise a black son in America

Growing up,

I didn't always understand why
my parents

made me follow the rules that they did.

Like, why did I really have to mow the lawn?

Why was homework really that important?

Why couldn't I put jelly beans in my oatmeal?

My childhood was abound with questions like this.

Normal things,

like being a kid

and realizing that sometimes,

it was best to listen to my parents

even when I didn't exactly know why.

And it's not that they didn't want
me to think critically.

Their parenting always sought to reconcile

the tension between having my siblings
and I understand the realities of the world,

while ensuring that we never accept
the status quo as inevitable.

I came to realize that this,

in and of itself,

was a very purposeful form of education.

One of my favorite educators,

Brazilian author and scholar Paulo Freire,

speaks quiete explicitly about the need
for edcuation to be used

as a tool for critical awakening,

and shared humanity.

In his most famous book,

"Pedagogy of the Oppresed",

he states, "No one can be
authentically human

while he prevents others from being so."

I've been thinking a lot
about this lately.

This idea of humanity.

And specifically, who in this world
is afforded the privilege

of being perceived as fully human.

Over the course of the past several months,

the world has watched as
unarmed black men, and women,

have had their lives taken at the hands
of the police and vigilante.

These events and all that has transpired
after them

have brought me back to my own childhood

and the decisions that my parents
made about

raising a black boy in America

that growing up,

I didn't always understand in a way
that I do now.

I think of how hard it must have been,

how profoundly unfair it must have felt

for them to feel like they had to strip away

parts of my childhood

just so that I could come home at night.

For example, I think of how one night,

when I was around 12-years-old
on an overnight field trip to another city,

my friends and I bought Supersoakers

and turned the hotel parking lot
into our own

water-filled battle zone.

We hid behind cars,

running through the darkness that
laid between the streetlights,

boundless laughter ubiquitous
across the pavement.

But within ten minutes,

my father came outside,

grabbed my by my forearm

and lead me unto our room
with an unfamiliar grip.

Before I could say anything,

tell him how foolish he had
made me look in front of my friends,

he derided me for being so naive.

Looked me in the eye,

fear consuming his face,

and said, "Son, I'm sorry,

but you can't act the same
as your white friends.

You can't pretend to shoot guns.

You can't run around in the dark.

You can't hide behind anything
other than your own teeth."

I know now how scared he must have been.

How easily I could have fallen
into the empty of the night,

that some man would mistake this water

for reason to wash all of this away.

These are the sorts of messages
I've been inundated with

my entire life:

Always keep your hands where
they can see them,

don't move too quickly,

take off your hood when the sun goes down.

My parents raised me and my siblings
in an armor of advice,

an ocean of alarm bells so someone
wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs,

so that they wouldn't make
a memory of this skin.

So that we could be kids,

not casket or concrete.

And it's not because they thought
it would make us better than anyone else,

it's simply because they wanted
to keep us alive.

All of my black friends were raised
with the same message:

the talk, given to us when we
were old enough

to be mistaken for a nail ready
to be hammered to the ground,

when people made our melanin
synonymous with something to be feared.

But what does it do to a child,

to grow up knowing that you
simply cannot be a child?

That the whims of adolescence
are too dangerous for your breath,

that you cannot simply be curious,

that you are not afforded the luxury
of making a mistake,

that someone's implicit bias may be

the reason why you don't wake up
in the morning.

But this cannot be what defines us.

Because we have parents that
raised us to understand

that our bodies weren't meant
for the backside of a bullet,

but for flying kites and jumping rope

and laughing until our stomach burst.

We had teachers who taught us
how to raise our hands

in class, and not just to signal
surrender

and that the only thing we should
give up

is the idea that we aren't worthy
of this world.

So when we say that black lives matter,

it's not because others don't,

it's simply because we must affirm
that we are worthy

of existing without fear

when so many things tell us that we are not.

I want to live in a world where my son
will not be presumed "guilty"

the moment he is born,

where a toy in his hand is not mistaken
for anything other than a toy.

And I refuse to accept that we can't
build this world into something new,

a place where a child's name
doesn't have to be

written on a t-shirt or a tombstone,

where the value of someone's life
isn't determined

by anything other than the fact
that they had lungs,

a place where every single one of us
can breathe.

Thank you.

(Applause)