I had my entire summer blog stories lineup mapped out, but today I woke up to a CNN story titled:

A crying boy begged his father not to call the police on a black man. The father did it anyway

Updated 7:32 AM EDT July 9, 2019

My first thought was, “Ugh, here we go again.” However, once I looked closer to the title I became curious as to the circumstances in which a man would be doing something with who I am assuming to be his son in tow who is visibly adamantly against whatever the dad is doing. Well, I skimmed the story and found out it was a black man waiting for a friend in an apartment building. The man who appears to be white began to question the black man about his business at the place and commands that the black man calls his friend to verify that there is a friend who lives in the building! 😳🤔🙄 The black man begins recording the man to let him know that this whole ordeal is ridiculous and even tells him that he will be the next viral video of BS police phone calls on black folks.

The son tells the dad to leave it alone and they should just go. The son. A small boy. I wonder if he has black friends. I wonder if he hangs out with black kids at school. I wonder if there’s even a black girl at school that he many have a crush on. The small boy…in tears…reminds me of childhood innocence. It reminds me that this outward display of hatred that seems to have exponentially increased since 45 took office is a learned behavior. It is not innate. People are not born like this. Kids do not reflect the hatred that we’ve seen unless that are taught it by people that they are around. This small boy knew that what his dad was doing was wrong. He called him on it. He said that he agreed with the black man. AND THE DAD STILL CALLED THE COPS. I wonder how this one incident and the fallout from the viral video will impact this small boy for the rest of his life…

This story #turnsup my frustration towards the lack of education in race relations in the USA. People are so quick to talk about this being a post racial society or how slavery was so long ago, but we are still living in a society where skin color matters.

Sincerely,

Stassi

Side note: The researcher in me wants to follow this kid to see how this experience shapes his life trajectory, particularly his views on race relations.