Tonight Jerry, Ty, and I had the wonderful opportunity to go to dinner together. It was such fun! We ate oysters, burgers, and loaded fries. We laughed and joked. It was a gift.
When we got to the restaurant there was a short wait. We added our name to the list and they said they'd text us when a table was ready. We were on a cute little street with tons of little shops and restaurants, so we started walking around, taking it all in. Before long I got a text that our table was ready, so we turned around and headed back to the restaurant. Ty started running and immediately, without blinking an eye I said firmly, "Ty don't run." Not because I thought he'd run into traffic, or because he wasn't being considerate of others, or because I'm a stick in the mud. But because he's black, and I don't know what any bystander or the security officer a few yards away in his vehicle will think of a black teenage boy running down the street at almost 9pm on a Saturday. People are insane. And black males are viewed as a threat. So my automatic, knee jerk reaction to anything Ty does in public is a split second assessment of how threatening his behavior could be interpreted. That's how it is for me, and every other mom of a black boy in America.
I just thought you should know, in case you didn't.
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