Mike Kim / Getty
"Mom, I understand the protests," Marcus said one morning over breakfast at the kitchen table of our home, in the suburbs of Seattle. A little more than two weeks had passed since George Floyd’s murder and the start of the nationwide uprising it inspired. “But I don’t understand the broken windows or the buildings set on fire. It’s not right to burn down a building you don’t own.”
Over the years, I’ve fielded countless questions about systemic racism from Marcus and his older brother, Malcolm. As they’ve grown, my answers have evolved. How I explained everything when they were ten was different from how I explained it when they were six. Still, I’ve struggled with how to prepare my sons for the racist world into which they were born while also making room for their dreams. There’s no easy way to sugarcoat the explanation to a child of why they cannot play with toy guns outside, a required conversation in our home after Tamir Rice was killed by a white police officer in Cleveland—that a Black boy is at risk by holding anything that an officer could perceive as a weapon.