Dear White Mom:
I’m writing this to you as a friend, as a dear friend. We’ve shared so much over the years, before kids – blissfully ignorant childhoods, angsty teenage years, the discovery and recklessness and uncertainty of college and early adulthood, and now this. Motherhood. We’ve been there for each other all the time – through birth plans gone awry, breastfeeding, being so sleep deprived we don’t know if we’re wearing shoes, picky eaters, husbands who appear to be working against us, discipline, the mean moms at the playground, everything. I don’t know how I’d be here without you, and I hope you feel the same about me.
I love you, girl, you know I do.
But now I need something. My heart hurts so much I can barely stand. I don’t ask for much — you know I hate asking for anything, but now I need help, desperately, and so I’m going to put myself out there.
Michael Brown was recently shot. I know you know who that is. You’d have to have your head under a rock, and I don’t befriend women — people–like that. Another young black male, unarmed, shot dead by a policeman, or some white person who just thought he was in the wrong, simply because he had brown skin. The list is growing, weekly apparently, so much so that it seems like it’s open season on black men and boys.
