The Street We Teach Them To Cross
Black children are taught avoidance as survival, whilst white-bodied people are taught avoidance as separation
Let me say it again….
Black children are taught avoidance as survival, whilst white-bodied people are taught avoidance as separation
A comment on one of my posts stopped me.
It was well-meaning.
Gentle even.
Someone said their heart was deep in the grief this family feels, as well as “his larger community.”
And I knew what they meant.
I really did.
But I also felt the separation immediately.
His family.
His community.
As if this grief lives somewhere over there.
As if it belongs to a particular set of people.
As if Black death is a tragedy that can be witnessed from outside the circle.
As if the grief does not indict the whole.
That separation is part of the wound.
Because if we are humans, mothers, parents, kinfolk, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, friends, and community members, then the ache cannot stop at “his family and his community.”
You should ache for us all.
Not because grief needs to become performative.
Not because everyone gets to claim Black pain as their own.
But because separation is one of the ways people protect themselves from responsibility.
It lets someone feel sad without feeling implicated.
It lets someone mourn without examining the conditions that made mourning necessary.
It lets someone say, “their community,” instead of asking how their community has helped create the danger our community is forced to survive.
That is the deeper work.
Not just sympathy.
Not just ache.
But the willingness to sit with what the ache reveals.
Because the truth is, Black children have to be taught avoidance of white people the way we teach them to cross the street.
Look both ways.
Listen.
Pay attention.
Do not assume they see you.
Do not assume being right will keep you safe.
Do not assume innocence will be recognized on your body.
Do not assume the rules will protect you.
That is how common the violence against Black bodies is.
That is how ordinary the preparation has become.
That is the pain point.
That is the wound.
And the lie covering that wound is the lie that we live in a post-racial world.
The Lie of Post-Racial America
Post-racial America is one of this country’s most dangerous myths.
It tells people that racism is mostly historical.
That race no longer structures danger.
That if something happens now, it must be isolated.
An accident.
A misunderstanding.
A personal conflict.
A tragedy with no pattern attached.
Post-racial America asks Black people to ignore the very pattern recognition that has kept us alive.
It asks us to wait for official facts while our bodies are already remembering.
It asks us to treat every incident as separate, even when the grief arrives in a familiar shape.
It asks us to pretend the past is finished because the present learned better language.
But we are not confused.
We are remembering.
The lie of post-racial America is tied to the unfinished lie of Reconstruction.
The promise that the war ended and the country was remade.
The promise that freedom meant safety.
The promise that citizenship meant protection.
The promise that the law would recognize Black humanity without being forced.
But Reconstruction was not completed.
It was abandoned.
And the lie stayed.
It changed clothes.
Changed language.
Hid behind progress.
Called itself colorblind.
Called itself polite.
Called itself neutral.
Called itself objective.
Called itself progressive.
Called itself liberal.
Called itself law and order.
Called itself self-defense.
Called itself unfortunate.
Called itself isolated.
Called itself anything except what it is.
So we teach our children.
Not because we want them afraid.
Because we want them alive.
When My Son Said, “I Don’t Trust White People”
This is not theoretical for me.
I once got called into my child’s school because he refused to transition with a staff member for testing connected to his 504 Plan accommodations.
When I arrived, I came calm.
Curious.
Grounded enough to ask what was wrong instead of assuming he was simply being difficult.
And without flinching, my child said:
“I don’t trust white people.”
My first instinct was the one many of us have been programmed to perform.
The respectable one.
The conciliatory one.
The one that rushes in to make whiteness comfortable before the Black child’s body has even finished telling the truth.
“But you have white family. White friends.”
And he said:
“I know them. I love them. I don’t know her.”
And just like that, the whole conversation changed.
Because what do we usually do in that moment?
We shut it down.
We say:
“That’s not nice.”
“That’s not kind.”
“That’s racist.”
“We don’t talk like that.”
But is it?
Or is it a Black child naming a truth he feels in his body?
Is it hatred?
Or is it discernment?
Is it rudeness?
Or is it pattern recognition?
Is it disrespect?
Or is it generations of warning carried in the nervous system of a Black child trying to determine who is safe?
My son was not being mean.
He was being honest.
And honesty becomes dangerous in systems built on denial.
That moment reminded me that Black children often know what adults have been trained to explain away.
They know when their body says no.
They know when proximity does not yet mean safety.
They know that being nice is not the same thing as being protected.
They know that a smile, a role, a title, or an institution does not automatically create trust.
And instead of teaching them to betray that knowing in order to make white adults comfortable, maybe we need to ask why their discernment feels so threatening.
I did not punish him.
I did not scold him into softness.
I did not ask him to perform trust he did not feel.
I held him.
I reminded him he was safe with me.
And a Black male staff member stayed with him until he felt regulated enough to transition.
That is what love looked like in real time.
Not forcing a Black child to override his body.
Not making a white adult’s discomfort more urgent than his sense of safety.
Not confusing compliance with care.
Love looked like listening.
Love looked like context.
Love looked like community.
Love looked like repair.
And yes, I could hold the humanity of the white staff member too.
It probably did not feel good to be distrusted.
It likely felt uncomfortable to be associated with a collective history she may not consciously identify with.
It may have felt unfair to be seen not only as an individual, but as someone moving through the world with whiteness attached to her body.
That discomfort is real.
But it is not more urgent than my son’s safety.
You do not have to be a white supremacist to carry the weight of white supremacy.
That is how systems work.
You do not have to intend harm to be shaped by it.
So no, I was not blaming her for a system she did not invent.
But I was holding the reality that whiteness travels with you whether you acknowledge it or not.
This is not about guilt.
It is about honesty.
And honesty is where repair begins.
Because when a Black child says, “I don’t trust white people,” the question should not be:
“How do we make him stop saying that?”
The question should be:
What has the world taught him?
What has history taught him?
What have institutions taught him?
What have Black mothers, fathers, aunties, grandmothers, elders, and ancestors had to teach Black children in order to keep them alive?
And what would white-bodied people have to repair for Black children’s bodies to stop carrying that warning so early?
Because distrust is not the wound.
Distrust is the scar.
The wound is the repeated harm that made distrust wise.
That is why the lesson begins so early.
Not because we want our children afraid.
Because we want them alive.
Because Black parenting in America often means teaching children how to survive what the country refuses to stop producing.
We teach them the room.
The tone.
The look.
The street.
The classroom.
The store.
The neighborhood.
The party.
The boat.
The island.
We teach them avoidance the way we teach them to cross the street.
And that is the poem.
The Street We Teach Them To Cross
We have to teach Black children
avoidance of white people
the way we teach them
to cross the street.
Look both ways.
Listen.
Do not assume they see you.
Do not assume the rules
will protect you.
Do not assume being right
will keep you alive.
Do not assume innocence
will be recognized
on your body.
This is what America
has made of childhood.
A lesson in calculation.
A map of exits.
A study of tone.
A training in distance.
A whole survival manual
tucked inside the mouth
before a child is old enough
to spell the word danger.
And still they tell us
we are post-racial.
Still they tell us
we are imagining the pattern.
Still they say
it is not always about race
as if Black people
have ever had the luxury
of finding out too late.
Post-racial America
is the lie Reconstruction left behind.
The promise that the war ended
and the country became new.
The promise that freedom
was enough.
The promise that citizenship
would shelter us.
The promise that the law
would recognize our humanity
without being forced.
But Reconstruction was not completed.
It was abandoned.
And the lie stayed.
It put on new clothes.
Changed its language.
Hid behind progress.
Called itself colorblind.
Called itself polite.
Called itself objective.
Called itself concerned.
Called itself law and order.
Called itself self-defense.
Called itself unfortunate.
Called itself isolated.
Called itself anything
except what it is.
So we teach our children.
Not because we want them afraid.
Because we want them alive.
We teach them how to leave.
How to lower their voice.
How to keep their hands visible.
How not to run.
How not to reach.
How not to argue with someone
who has already decided
their fear matters more
than your life.
We teach them the street.
The store.
The classroom.
The neighborhood.
The party.
The gas station.
The gym mat.
The island.
The boat.
The places where childhood
can become evidence.
The places where a Black child
can become a threat
before becoming a person.
And then someone asks
why we ache like this.
Why one family’s grief
moves through all of us.
Why we say his name
even if we never knew him.
Why Nolan sits heavy
in the body.
Why Kendrick never left.
Why Karmelo feels like
a terrible answer
to a terrible question.
Because if he had not made that choice,
we fear we would be writing
another poem for a grave.
And hear me clearly:
I am not romanticizing prison.
I am not glorifying violence.
I am naming the brutality
of a world where Black children
are forced to choose
between a cage
and a coffin.
A world where survival
can still be punished.
A world where restraint
can still become a funeral.
A world where the lesson is:
take the charge
or become the chalk outline.
And then we are expected
to speak gently
about the conditions
that make such choices possible.
No.
I will not make this palatable.
Because there is something
deeply broken
in a country where Black parents
have to measure every lesson
against the possibility
of death.
There is something broken
in a world where Black children
must learn threat assessment
before they learn ease.
There is something broken
in people who can look
at Black grief and say:
I ache for his family
and his community.
As if that separation
is innocent.
As if his community
is somewhere over there.
As if the grief can be contained
inside Black neighborhoods,
Black churches,
Black mothers,
Black timelines,
Black bodies.
No.
You should ache for us all.
You should ache because
his community and your community
are not separate
unless separation is the lie
you still need
to stay comfortable.
You should ache because
what harms Black children
reveals the sickness
of the whole society.
You should ache because
your community helped build
the conditions
our community is forced to survive.
You should ache because
becoming white
cost your people something too.
Not the same cost.
Not the same wound.
Not the same danger.
But something human died
in the making of whiteness.
Connection died.
Memory died.
Kinship died.
The capacity to feel
without separating yourself
from responsibility died.
A people do not become white
without burying parts of themselves
beneath the bargain.
And then they call the numbness
neutrality.
They call the distance
objectivity.
They call the inability to grieve
with us
reason.
But we know what it is.
Avoidance.
The same avoidance
we teach our children
as survival
is the avoidance whiteness uses
to escape its own reflection.
And there it is.
The wound and the lie
standing in the same room.
Black children must avoid whiteness
to survive.
White-bodied people avoid whiteness
to remain innocent.
And the country calls that peace.
But peace is not the absence
of Black screaming.
Peace is not the silence
after another mother
has been handed a name
instead of a child.
Peace is not telling us
to wait for facts
while history is standing
right there
with blood on its hands.
Peace is not being able
to cross the street
because danger is predictable.
Peace is not surviving
the lesson.
I want a world
where Black children
do not have to be taught
white avoidance
as a life skill.
I want a world
where being right
does not get them killed.
Where being afraid
does not get them punished.
Where defending themselves
does not become the beginning
of another kind of captivity.
Where leaving home
does not become a communal prayer.
Where coming back
is ordinary.
Where Black mothers
do not have to become prophets
of danger
just to raise a child.
Until then,
do not ask us
why we feel it.
Do not ask us
why we grieve beyond bloodline.
Do not ask us
why one Black child’s death
or imprisonment
moves through millions of bodies.
We are not confused.
We are connected.
We are remembering.
We are aching
from the place America
keeps pretending
does not exist.
And if you only ache
for his family
and his community,
you have not understood
the wound.
You are still standing
outside the grief
as if the fire
is not also burning
your house.
🌬️
Black avoidance tries to keep our children alive.
White avoidance tries to keep innocence intact.
And America rewards one while criminalizing the other.
Below the paywall, we are going deeper into the part most people avoid:
What becoming white does to memory, connection, grief, and accountability.
Why Black distrust is not hatred, but pattern recognition.
Why separation allows white-bodied people to ache for Black families without feeling responsible to Black safety.
How schools, homes, workplaces, and communities can stop punishing Black discernment and start practicing repair.
And what it means to move from sympathy into solidarity through embodied liberation work.
This is the work of Liberation Education.
We do not stop at awareness.
We practice interruption.
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Just ask.
Take a breath. 🌬️
Then come deeper.
