I Changed My Mind
I love you too much for that
I wrote this on Threads this week (light edits for flow):
Hear me out: Nolan was 18. "My baby would never" is easy to say, but we all know we can't control for what they do when we aren't around. In a world that knows terrorizing Black kids is easy sport? We raise em, we let em go, and they get killed for Skittles, for having the wrong friends, for being in the wrong car.
Black children and Black youth should have the same freedom to explore the world all others do.
That they don't is suffocating and terrifying. So we dark laugh into what we hope will prevent what we can't control.
But it can happen to all of ours. What a horror story. I feel sick.
I know EXACTLY who to blame. All the rest is just harm reduction.
I take it back.
I was responding to a conversation developing online—as it does in the face of violence we feel helpless to control— about what Nolan's parents did, didn't, should or shouldn't have allowed their son to do.
The issue? Should Nolan have been allowed or raised to see it acceptable to go on a trip with an all white (including at least one white-presenting Latino) group.
When I wrote what I wrote above, I was thinking of my own children, the Sky Babies, especially Sun Baby. The youngest boy. Who already knows “we don't play police” in our house or cowboys or robbers or guns. The copilot to his sister's captain. Whose wild temper and sense of justice will make him a hero one day—or a victim. Who was born the year George Floyd was killed.
I wrote thinking about how strong a man he will be one day, in vision, in purpose, and in stubbornness. And how ill-equipped I sometimes feel to raise him to be a feminist, a gentleman, an empathetic man, one who can hold his power sacred and also humble himself before a woman, a spirit, his God and his own limits in equal measure.
But I take it back now.
I don't want the freedom of white children for my children.
Their freedom is a freedom that says “well hey, let's hear both sides” and “well she asked for it” and “you people” and “you will not replace us.” The freedom of white children is the five year old who slaps her Black nurse because the porridge she ate was too hot. It is the freedom of boys who learned rape at the soiled hands of their father when they raided slave cabins together for sport. It is the freedom that says a baton is a spear is a penis is a bullet and the hand holding it should get whatever it wants, whenever it wants and wherever it wants it.
The freedom of white children says America should be great again because that is my inheritance and these bombs are my lullaby and this burning is my cologne and wherever I step on this globe what I see is mine, mine, mine, give it to me, me, me, now, now, now.
That is the freedom that left Nolan alone to die.
I don't want freedom or innocence or ignorance is bliss for my children if their freedom—even the feeling of it, even the fantasy of it—infringes on the humanity, on the will to live of another human being.
Instead, shake off the blinders from their eyes.
Instead, I take it back. I want to raise children free to choose to fight, to love, and to do so steeped in the righteous battle for justice in this world, who know how to fight on this plane, the one they are living on. Who know the truth of what this planet is and are prepared with joy and fortitude to fight for it.
I may not be up to this task. I may fold under the desire to protect them from horror that has no name. But I hope I can do this.
And maybe if they are not “innocent” or “free,” they will never leave their comrades behind.
Maybe they will never have to look in the mirror and turn away in shock or shame. Instead, maybe they will feast again and again on the beauty and truth of who they are, what they can be, and use that fire to make something new from the ashes that “freedom” left behind.
I hope, I beg.
