Blaming Black mothers for having normal boundary-testing teenagers didn’t sit well with my mother, a single mom herself. Her act of solidarity with the other single mothers in the room mattered all the more because my mother was raising a veritable, rule-following, Bible-toting Goody Two-Shoes. But she refused the carrot of thinking herself better than other folks because her own child didn’t have the behavior problems or classroom demeanor of some of the other children.
