“Oh God,” I thought, “I’m going to bear a black boy into the world.” I faked joy to the white nurse and dropped the phone after the call ended. “I can’t breathe.”My son had never taken a breath, and I was already mourning him. When we escaped to freedom, black children were liabilities, forced to bend low under the weight of a system intent on finding them, stealing them, and selling them. When they pulled my son from my stomach, he took a deep breath and wailed, inhaled and wailed again and again. That the reality of living as a black person, a black man in America will require me to cut short my lovely, gap-toothed boy’s childhood.

Source: The Guardian October 28, 2017 09:22 UTC