Out Of Sight, Out of Mind: Why White Moms Need to Care About Murdered Black Children

[MrScorpio]

August 14, 2014 By Danielle S

Unless you’ve been under a rock the last few days, you’ve probably heard about the current situation going on in Ferguson, Missouri. Long story very short, a police officer killed unarmed Black teenager, Mike Brown. If you haven’t heard of Mike Brown, maybe you’ve heard of Eric Garner or John Crawford? Both unarmed Black men killed by the police. Oh and then there’s Ezell Ford another unarmed Black man killed by police at a peaceful protest in LA. Maybe these stories are too new for you. Have you heard of Sean Bell or Oscar Grant? Maybe you think it’s just trigger happy police officers, but then there’s Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, etc (yes because the list goes on and on) all unarmed and all killed by white people for “looking suspicious,” “playing loud music,” and “asking for help after a car accident.”



On my private Facebook page, I’ve been publicly asking my “white friends” to speak up and speak out against the racial injustices that are currently taking place. I reposted my post from Black History Month and quoted this particular section:

“I am tired of the silence of mothers of other races on this subject because they are too afraid to delve into race. I am tired of the only lives being valued having little to no melanin. These are BOYS dying… BOYS being killed because their very existence makes GROWN WHITE MEN fearful. What if these were white teenage boys? What if it was your fiance gunned down the night before your wedding? What if it was your boyfriend/father of your child shot while handcuffed and laying face down? Would it matter then? Would there be national days of silence or calls for changes to gun reform across the blogsphere for those people? Or are guns only bad when used on innocent white children?

Your silence makes me not trust you. Your silence makes me feel like you do not care about the future of my brown boy. Your silence breaks my heart.”

- See more at: http://mamademics.com/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-why-white-moms-need-to-care-about-murdered-black-children/#sthash.CwH5Acg0.dpuf

[wildeyed]

1. I actually think about this a lot these days.

I worry about the safety of my black friend's sons and about how much stress it must put on them to have this worry. I try to let them know that I support them by posting or saying something when these awful thing happen, even when I feel awkward. I think the fact that I don't have to worry about my son in this way is the definition of white privilege.

Through volunteering at my son's school, I now know a number of mildly autistic black boys and I worry about them too. I mean a black kid who does not read social signals very well and will be perceived as disrespectful by strange authority figures because he does not make eye contact and also might become agitated under duress, what could go possibly wrong?