The Double Bind of the Unbound

Parents and teachers of Black children are in a double bind. It is our job to build children up and to help them see their value. It is also our job to tell them how to stay safe, to prevent their very murders if they go outside. Scratch that -even if they are inside sleeping in their own beds. These children we love, nurture, and raise are not safe. They are not valued. They are treated as expendable, a nuisance, criminal, worthless. Not worthy of breath.

Our words of love and empowerment mean nothing in a society where children in the midst of a normal day can witness on live television or social feed the very life being squeezed out of their father. When they hear of a young Black man jogging in an ordinarily peaceful neighborhood who is followed and shot down like an animal. When they hear of a young Black woman devoted to saving lives killed in her home by the same people she has often assisted in a crisis.

How can we build our children up in a world that seeks to tear them down? How can we make them see the importance of an education when they fear they may not live long enough to see success or to have families of their own?

The world did not start yesterday, last week, last year or even in the last century with its mission to destroy people of color. This mission is as old as the first time those of fair complexion realized they were counted as more valuable amongst men, that they hold the power and the privilege solely due to the whiteness of their skin.

The value of our Black children was once based only upon how their bodies could serve the White man. They had a value. A price. Over time the more our Black children have been “allowed” and yes, even encouraged to build their beautiful minds, the less their value has become. When their backs, their bodies could no longer be used at the whim of those who held them in bondage… When their minds were allowed to think, to dream, to invent, and to transcend the chains of their ancestors, it is not simply that their value decreased, they became something…. someone to be feared.

It is not enough that we march. It is not enough that we rally. It is not enough that we pray. It is surely not enough that we hold funerals and mourn the loss of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, and colleagues.

We must teach our children accurate history. We cannot allow them to remain protected or ignorant of the truth any longer. We as parents and teachers must advocate for culturally responsive teaching in our classrooms and accurate history, not the watered down version that has been delivered with the mission of changing the ugly narrative of this nation’s place on the world stage along with other nations who have practiced barbarism against its citizens deemed less than.

We have fought for admittance into bathrooms, the use of water fountains, to attend the same schools as White children, to live in the same communities. Now we must fight for their very right to breathe. We cannot be tired. We cannot be tired. We cannot be tired. There is no time for fatique.

Our children deserve to breathe.