Let me share some sobering statistics:
Ten percent of the African American male population is in prison.
One in three black men is under the supervision of the criminal justice system (in jail, prison, on parole, or probation).
There are more African American men enrolled in prison than in college.
There are one million black men in jail.
The “official” unemployment rate for black men hovers at 19 percent, more than double that of their white counterparts.
This number doesn’t reflect the true unemployment rate because it excludes the incarcerated black men.
(Other Western countries don’t exclude prisoners from unemployment statistics just to understate a reality).
Despite all these facts, I promised my husband that I would reconsider my stance on having a child if Barack Obama was elected President. This was in 2007 when the election of a bi-racial—much less a black—President seemed as unlikely as snow in Los Angeles.
As we watched Obama’s acceptance speech, in 2008, on what appeared to be a cold November night in Chicago, I looked away from the fuzzy 13-inch television in my home office to glance at my husband, and I thought, “Let it Snow.”
When I discovered I was pregnant, I immediately envisioned a little girl. Before discarding the instant pregnancy test, I started thinking about the pros and cons of each gender. In weighing the prospect of raising a girl or a boy, my hope for a girl won out. Girls seemed to me less of a worry. Other than the ever-present struggle with black hair in our Eurocentric society and the fact that my potential daughter (like all girls) could become pregnant through a lapse of parental supervision, a little girl seemed easier on the whole. After all, I was the girl my mother wanted, and I was easy.
Right, ma?
But halfway through the pregnancy I had a very vivid dream that I’d given birth and the baby was a boy. After having the same exact same, and equally vivid, dream two more times, I gave in to the idea that I might have a little boy.
As a single girl and only child, what I know about raising little African American boys could fit in a thimble, with space to spare.
* * *
It was around seven o’clock on a Monday night when the midwife placed my newborn on my chest, covered in a receiving blanket. While she and the other midwife waited for the umbilical cord and placenta to end their role in providing nutrients for the baby, I waited to find out the gender. Fortunately, my midwives were more interested in my health and the health of my baby than lifting the receiving blanket to look between the baby’s legs. After several minutes, I finally asked.
My dreams had come true. He is a boy.
As with all newborns, I imagine, the notes of congratulations poured in. From the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, my husband got from men who assumed that he, like they, thought boys were better, to lots of well wishes from family, friends and acquaintances.
Everyone exclaims how cute he is, what a blessing he is, what a miracle he is. And while I’m thankful for the congratulations, and agree that he’s just adorable (no bias here) – I can’t help wonder what the reaction will be to my child when he hits 11, 12 or 13 and starts to look less like a cute little boy, and begins to look more like a man?
I Wonder How He Will React
How will he handle being patted on the head one day, and feared by purse-grasping women on another?
How will he navigate in a city, a state, a country all statistically stacked against him: facing correctional control, possible disenfranchisement, and almost certain periods of high unemployment?
How will he dodge police in the two largest cities in the country – the city I’m from, New York, and the city I live in, Los Angeles?
In the new millennium, the New York Police Dept. is facing criticism for its hundreds of thousands of stops of innocent black and brown people, and even keeping a database of those innocent folks. Must I say anything about the Los Angeles Police Dept.? Its reputation as abusive to black and brown folks needs just one word to evoke chills: Rampart.
Will most people see him as an over-sexualized being out to get their daughters and wives? Will everyone assume he wants to be a basketball or football player or entertainer when he grows up?
Will he come to assume most black people rap after watching the commercials aimed at us that assume if it’s not in rhyme, we can’t understand the message?
When I broach this topic with many well-meaning liberals, they assure me that most likely my child will be “different.” After all, I’m educated, and unincarcerated. I then point out that I’ve been unemployed (not by choice) for most of my adult life.
The numbers don’t bode well either, and (shock!) they have only gotten worse in Barack Obama’s “post-racial” America.
Maybe it will be “different,” but I’ll have to start early.
About 20 years ago, I briefly met Jawanza Kunjufu who spoke at my college. His book, entitled Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, was also the topic of his speech. It was the first time I’d thought in any detail about how the lives of black boys start with an uphill climb in the classroom. Children like mine are often shuttled, from Day One, into remedial classrooms and ignored by teachers. I don’t think of myself as a conspiracy theorist, just a well-informed skeptic. But I am convinced that the push toward underperformance starts early. George W. Bush has said a lot with which I disagree, but he nailed it when he described this as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
If he is “different,” how can I help him navigate the world as an “Oreo” – the mark of a black exceptionalist?
I know, I know – if Barack Obama can become President – then so can my boy. Unfortunately, there’s only one President, and over 35 million of us, trying to stay (or get) employed, and trying to stay out of jail.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
