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“Dad, Could A Kid Die In Our Town?”

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Why Every Dad Needs to Understand “The Talk” We Don’t All Have

By Paul D. Williams

The joy that Paul Williams, his wife and daughters are filled with have been tested by the stark realities of life in times of racial turmoil.

Have you had “The Talk” with your children?

It’s a seemingly innocuous, if incredibly uncomfortable, conversation that most Dads dread — almost as much as their teenage children – when it’s time to talk about sex. But to African American Dads, and other men of color, The Talk means a heartbreaking discussion about the life-and-death implications of being born in their own skin in this country.

The Talk doesn’t discriminate among Black families. It’s a necessity for Black Dads and their kids, whether they are sitting in the Upper East Side of Manhattan or the Lower West Side of San Diego, to share the advice that their fathers shared with them. It’s the most disheartening generational tradition in any African American family when we have to instruct our children how to follow a very specific code of conduct that they have to follow, all because they have found themselves face to face with racial bias or a law enforcement officer who is abusing the professional code of conduct by which they are supposed to abide. From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray, Philando Castille to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, thousands of men and women of color have been targeted for violent encounters with mobs, militias, and law-enforcement officers.

I’ve been targeted by officers multiple times and have never shared my stories with our four daughters. But, when the unrest that has followed the deaths of Floyd and Taylor have bubbled to the surface the racial tensions that are threatening to split the nation in two, my wife and I knew that it was time to tell them.

The Talk focuses on six essential rules:

  • You will be treated differently than your white peers; you will not be given the same leeway, and you will not be given the grace of being “just a kid”.
  • Do not be the only person of color in a large group of kids.
  • You will be followed through stores; avoid any actions that might be misperceived as suspicious. Stay above scrutiny.
  • Be mindful of your surroundings; and avoid any actions that might be misperceived as threatening.
  • People, especially police officers, will be unwarrantedly suspicious or threatened by you; remain impeccably polite and respectful.
  • If you must engage with police officers, move slowly, and announce any action before doing it; do not give them any reason to justify shooting you.

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

These points aren’t based on paranoia; they’re rooted in reams of data and centuries of life experience. Kids are reminded of Emmett Till, and more recently Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and Sandra Bland, as examples to punctuate these points. Most African American families have firsthand experience of relatives who have had life-altering experiences with race-based brutality. Studies like The Stanford University Open Policing Project, which analyzed over 200 million police stops across the country, have found that Black drivers are stopped at 3-5 times the rate of white drivers. And, although statistically less likely to find contraband than on white drivers, officers are three times more likely to search Black and Latinx drivers than white drivers.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for these police interactions to have fatal results.  And, even when not fatal, these interactions often result in entanglement with the complex, and hard-to-exit U.S. criminal-justice system.  African Americans are imprisoned at a rate of 5.5 times that of whites. A key contributor to the disparity is in incarceration rates for youth is the difference in how the two groups are handled on points left to the discretion of the police officer or court officials. In New Jersey, African American youth are at least 10 times as likely to be held in correctional placement for the same infractions for which white youth are released with warnings.

For centuries, the connection between law enforcement and white-supremacist groups has been anecdotally known and discussed within the Black Community. More recently, however, third-party reports have confirmed their fear and suspicion. A recent FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide found that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white-supremacist extremists, and sovereign-citizen extremists often have identified active links to law-enforcement officers.”

The Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook comments made by nearly 2,900 current and former police officers in eight cities, found that nearly 20 percent of the current officers identified in the study made public posts or comments that appear “to endorse violence, racism, and bigotry”. This included officers in leadership positions.

These officers put a stain on the vast majority of law-enforcement officers who consistently exhibit the courage, care, and integrity that help keep our towns and cities safe. African Americans know how challenging it is for police officers to do their jobs, and they respect the fact that most officers perform it admirably every day. We are thankful and indebted to those officers and their families.

It is the rare exception to find an African-American male who has not had at least one direct experience with racial profiling by an officer. And an African-American family that has not experienced a severely disruptive incident is equally rare. The data and the all-too-common anecdotal viral videos of officers roughing up Black people don’t support the justification that the violent actions are prompted by the person’s failure to comply.   So, regardless of who we are, and where we live, almost all Black parents, at some point, have The Talk.

The Williams family remains positive in the face of racial challenges.

THE TALK HITS HOME

My wife and I recently had to have The Talk with our three oldest daughters (9, 10, and 12 years old). They had been hearing us discuss news events and were asking questions. We began delicately, but very directly, explaining the current facts and the long-standing history that connects the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor to the U.S. Civil-Rights Movement that we had taught them.

It was heartbreaking. These girls have always carried themselves with the innocence of kids who live in the security of Maplewood, a relatively affluent, diverse New Jersey suburb. I underestimated this innocence; and I felt horrible at the sight of their reaction to having a bit of it taken from them. Their faces were clouded over, somber and confused. We watched them formulate their questions in their heads. They asked some, decided not to ask others. Our most sensitive daughter, our 10-year-old, stared at her hands and tried hard to present a stoic front for us. But she couldn’t prevent a tear from slipping past her firewall; once the dam cracked, it broke completely. When one wall came down, the other two followed in a cascading waterfall of disappointment and confusion.

Our girls tend to be at the top of their classes. They are driven, confident, and self-competitive. They never have doubted that they can accomplish the BIG plans they’ve already made. But this was the first time that they’d been told to expect headwinds borne of ignorance, something they’d never experienced but would have to anticipate. I saw them deflate a little.

I wept myself when I thought about it later. Furious and sad. Furious. And then, I woke up before dawn the next day, thinking of ways to build them back up. Their minds are filled with many things, but racial injustice is not one of them. Or, so I thought. Subsequent conversations informed us that they had become aware of experiencing micro-aggressions as early as second grade. They had not connected them, but our talk appeared to be the catalyst that helped them put the pieces together.

They wanted to know if something like the Ahmaud Arbrey murder could happen in our town. I’d like to have been able to give them a definitive “No”, but I couldn’t with complete confidence. Instead, I told them it was unlikely.

I explained that I spend time volunteering with our local Community Board on Police because I want to ensure that the chances were even smaller. I explained that I had made sure to introduce them to our local officers and to the Mayor of our small town so they would know who to reach out to for help if I wasn’t around, even if the help they needed was due to unfair treatment from another officer. I explained that one of the many reasons that my wife spends so much time volunteering with the PTA is because it decreases the chances of the types of slights and micro-aggressions that they’d just shared.

When I shared on social media that we’d had The Talk with our girls, many of my white friends and loved ones asked the very well-meaning question of how my family is doing during this time. I impishly ask them how they’re doing, and how The Talk went with their families.  Impish because I suspect that it hadn’t even occurred to most of them that there was a talk to be had with their kids. But I was also serious because I actually think therein lies the breakthrough.

The thing that distinguishes Black Lives Matter from prior civil-rights movements is that it is primarily based on the awakening of white Americans to the systemic structures that have allowed the momentum of overt racism, which was outlawed long ago, to continue. Black Americans are very well aware of things like redlining, microaggressions, and The School-to-Prison Pipeline because their survival depends on it. But many white Americans have had the privilege of being able to reach far into adulthood without even being exposed to the concepts.

What the current movement is doing, with its discussions of “white privilege” and “white fragility”, is presenting us with the opportunity to dismantle the mythology that has allowed even very progressive and equity-minded white Americans to live with blind spots that overvalue European contributions to world history and white American ingenuity and virtue, while underplaying the contributions, ingenuity, and work of other ethnic groups. That is not to say that there weren’t innumerable white contributions to the country; they just didn’t do it on their own.

There is a saying that “History is a collection of lies agreed upon.” This is very relevant for teaching of World History in America. There is a massive gap in knowledge between reality and what is taught about the history of this country. There have been concerted efforts to hide or to remove a robust account of American history. Things like Black Wall Street, the Tuskegee Experiment, Rosewood, Sally Hemmings, even Japanese internment camps are glossed over if taught at all.   It is perfectly possible for an American to exit graduate school without ever having heard of Mansa Musa, Lewis Latimer, nor the 12th Century University at Timbuktu.

This lack of historical accuracy and information fuels both, the conscious white supremacist thought and the unconscious biases that are being addressed now. I have joked with friends that I would like to change the name of the movement from “Black Lives Matter” to “White Folks, Do The Work” so that we can encourage them to take the time to expand their knowledge of what “American” history really entails.

Opponents of a more well-rounded telling of history call it unpatriotic and say that it badmouths the role of our Founding Founders. I’d argue the opposite; Understanding the complexities of the people and the times gives us a better appreciation for the work done to help our country survive. It also helps us better understand the complexities that our country is trying to navigate now. Acknowledging the economic foundations enabled by slavery doesn’t mean that there aren’t other equally enabling elements of our foundation that also deserve credit.

Similarly, acknowledging past wrongdoing doesn’t make you guilty of them.  Nor should it stand as an indictment of white Americans today. It does, however, help us better understand how those wrongdoings have come forward to create the socio-economic dynamics that we see today across all demographics.  And how some of those wrongdoings have just morphed rather than actually gone away.  One of the ironies of our country’s racial debates is the strong adherence of working-class whites to the mythology of our country’s narrative despite the fact that it largely underrepresents them and their contributions as well.

There have been significant contributions made by multiple cultures in this country. Not knowing them and teaching them does everyone disservice, especially white children who grow up not knowing the cultural and historical richness of the African American family, the Latinx family, the South Asian classmate, the East Asian neighbors all around them. Which brings us back to The Talk.

For now, The Talk remains a necessity for Black families in America. Still, I remain hopeful that, together, we are building a new future, when we can chart a course for non-Black families can create a new  version of The Talk, one driven by three main points:

  • Speak out; and work to be an ally. You cannot be silent on social justice issues. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu
  • Learn history on a timeline that isn’t focused on Western Europe. ALL Americans, including Indigenous Americans, had rich cultures and heritages before they converged to form our country. Africa, Asia, and the Americas all had thousands of years of organized civilization before Europe left the Dark Ages. Learn about those times — and the unheralded men and women of color who contributed to our society once here.
  • Identify and dismantle ALL oppressive systems. Things like segregated universities, Jim Crow, and lack of access to many of the socio-economic escalators available to white-Americans (e.g. the GI Bill) were systemic barriers to African American progress. Practices like Red-Lining, Stop & Frisk, and over-policing have the same effect today.  Speak out to address these things. But also speak out against sexism, LGBTQ+ discrimination, ableism, and immigration rights. And remember to view all of your actions through the lens of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s essential lesson: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

THE PATH TO UNDERSTANDING

I appreciate how shocking it may be for people to finally understand the inherent privilege that comes with their skin color, and I hope that they will be self-aware enough to support my one heartfelt plea: “White Folks, Do The Work!” I simply ask that you join the fight for unity by putting in the work to dismantle the systems and misinformation that have robbed every one of us from completely embracing how “We, The People…” can, once and for all, can be the one phrase that will unite us and lead us on a clear path together.  the one phrase  Please take the time to review these six resources that can prepare you for The Talk that can help reshape our shared experience:

BIAS, BY THE NUMBERS

  • The national rate of incarceration for Black youth was 433 per 100,000, compared to 86 for white youth.
  • Notably, the racial disparity between Black and white youth in custody increased by 22% since 2001.
  • In 2015, U.S. Police Officers fatally shot more unarmed Black men in the first five months than German police had shot, regardless of race — or whether they were armed or unarmed — in the previous two years.
  • Nationwide, Blacks are 3 times as likely as whites to be killed by police officers. In NJ, the ratio of Blacks killed by the police vs. the percentage of overall population is 3:1.  In some states, it is as high as 6:1.  Utah, the highest, is 9:1.
  • And although marijuana usage rates are consistently equally across both groups, Blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites.
  • In a 2019 report, the Plain View Project documented 5,000 patently bigoted social media posts by 3,500 accounts identified as belonging to current and former law enforcement officials.

Paul Williams is the father of four daughters, ages 12, 10, 9, and 6.  Originally from Indiana, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife of 15 years. They have a family vision statement that includes a focus on helping their kids become, “kind, helpful, spiritually grounded, confident, curious, global citizens” and “their truest selves”.  So far, so good.

 

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