Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

by Emmanuel Acho

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for black people ages fifteen to twenty-four, and black men are at four times higher risk than black women.

All those things work together to destabilize black people, making it harder and harder to keep families intact. Let’s Get Uncomfortable

I now know so much more about the pain of my black brothers and sisters and how much more black children have to work to overcome and defy the odds.

Talk It, Walk It

Talk about the history of black families and slavery. Talk about how the media portrays black people and the way that shapes all of our perceptions. Talk about systemic racism.

broken

enslaved

slave.

when we know by now that the disjoint owes a lot to systemic forces.

Big Brothers Big Sisters (www.bbbs.org)

National Mentoring Resource Center (www.nationalmentoringresourcecenter.org)

If you want more context, read The Moynihan Report and The Kerner Report.

James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk

Barry Jenkins film adaptation, a great characterization of how black families endured in the ’50s and ’60s against stacked odds.

“I am a white man who is married to a black woman, and we have two beautiful children. Being a white man, I cannot begin to know the pressures of being black in America. As a father to interracial children, I fear that I cannot adequately prepare them for the future. How can I explain to my son and daughter that life could be harder for them than it was for me?” —Kevin

My journey of love can’t be any different just because of the color of someone’s skin. And people can’t judge me for picking someone who doesn’t look like me. I feel like they expect me to pick someone who looks just like me, but that’s not fair. They should want me to fall in love with whoever it is that I vibe with. —RACHEL LINDSAY

First,

As a reminder, “I don’t see color” is not an okay thing to say, because to say we’re all exactly the same is to gloss over a whole history and presence of inequality.

Let’s Rewind

Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.

miscegenation

Trolling’s been around a long time, y’all.

“joke”

“less...

one-drop rule,

hypodescent.

That rule stipulated that a baby’s race was determined by its mother, which was another way of saying that white men fornicating with or raping their slaves c...

the number of human bodies available for the labor.

In that infamous Supreme Court decision, the court unanimously upheld the conviction of a black man and white woman who’d been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for violating Alabama’s miscegenation law, setting a precedent for banning interracial marriages all over the country.

(McLaughlin v. Florida)

Loving v. Virginia

(shout-out to the ACLU)

“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the state.”

transracial adoption,

(rather than, say, to avoid the stigma of having a kid out of wedlock)

matching.

Matching required that adoptive parents be married heterosexual couples who looked, felt, and behaved as if they’d conceived other people’s children themselves.

transracial adoption.

“a vehement stand against placements of black children in white homes for any reason.”

“unnecessary,”

“unnat...

“artifi...

“chat...

Let’s Get Uncomfortable

How did y’all end up here?

If you’re going to be in a relationship with a black person, be aware that your interracial relationship might include two different cultures and/or two different value systems.

Preconceived assumptions are prejudice, and you don’t want to be prejudiced against your partner.

As we’ve discussed, to be color blind is to not fully see a person, and in this case, that someone would be a person you strongly care about.

Knowing about the culture of your loved one is a must in adoption, too.

Better to prepare a child for that likely inevitability and to show them the world in all its context and complexity.