What I Will Teach My Black Son to Fear

In light of the senseless murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain, I am posting a column I wrote that was published in 2006 in the Chicago Sun-Times. Entitled "What I Will Teach My Black Son to Fear", it deals with the realities of raising children of color, especially boys, in this world where they are seen as suspects and guilty until proven innocent. As parents of African-American children, especially boys, we have to deal with the reality that our children's lives can be snatched away because of the perception of danger caused by the color of their skin. Even in the age of Obama, our sons can be hunted down, shot, murdered with only candy and iced tea on their person and the killer allowed to walk free--justifying shooting an unarmed teen as self defense and saying he was threatened.

When I look at Trayvon's handsome face, my heart is saddened because I see my son and my nephews. I am also saddened when I see photos of Blair Holt and Derrion Albert, two beautiful black boys who were killed by black boys who looked like them. When I see their mothers crying and see Trayvon's mother, my heart breaks because I know how much I love my son. My son recently turned 10 and as his parents my husband and I will have to teach him the hard facts of life as a matter of survival. As I wrote almost 6 years ago:

"Above all, I will tell my son to remember that he is a black man, and people will see him as a threat, sometimes by his presence alone. I will tell him that as a black man, he is the most loved and most hated person in America, praised on athletic fields, cheered for his musical skills, but far too quickly jeered, imprisoned, castigated and murdered."


December 10, 2006


If I must say so-- and I must -- my son Malik is cute and cuddly. He has a great personality and a charming smile. His father and I called him "ladies' man"as an infant because of his inclination toward women. He was a big boy when he was just 18 months old and often mistaken for an older toddler.

One day, my beautiful, black baby boy will be a black man -- probably a big black man. And one of the most important lessons I will have to teach him is how to deal with police and white women.

Every time I see a video of a black man being beaten by police, in my heart I fear that could someday be my son. When I hear a mother recounting her son being beaten by police officers, I fear for my son. I have seen too many videotapes of black men being beaten, read too many stories of black men killed by police, or shot multiple times, sodomized and brutalized. Will it be my son the police are slamming against a car? I wonder. Will my son be shot at 41 times and struck by 19 bullets, like Amadou Diallo, simply for pulling out his wallet? Or will he be shot dead on his wedding day, without explanation, like New York's 23-year-old Sean Bell?

If I warn him to be careful in his encounters with the police and to be wary of white women, I can't help but wonder if the latter makes me racist. Am I?

Black men are in a dangerous position

I am a realist. And the reality is that black men are in a dangerous position simply because of the color of their skin and our history of race-based hate crime, discrimination and the lingering perception of black men as sexual predators. The reality is that if my son should someday be caught in a compromising position with a woman who happens to be white, her word will probably carry much more weight and, in the end, he will be the criminal or the rapist, whether he did it or not.

Don't get me wrong. I love my white sisters. I am not anti-white. But I am pro-life, the life and well-being of my son. I am not anti-police, but I am for protecting my son and teaching him to survive in an America where racial undertones impact human relations, in an America where the social taboo against black men fraternizing with white women remains, in an America where the stereotype that most black men are dangerous criminals still exists.

I can't help but wonder if it would be a dereliction of my duty as a mother if I did not warn my son of these potential dangers. Just as I will tell him to look both ways before he crosses the street, I know I must also make him aware of other potential dangers. At the same time, I want him to see both the good and the bad in circumstances and people. For example, I don't want him to be afraid of cars. Cars are useful. He will drive one someday. But he must know that cars can also kill. Fire keeps us warm, but it, too, can kill you.

So I wonder if I should recount for him someday the Scottsboro case. Or should I show him the movie "Rosewood?" When he is old enough to stomach the photos, should I tell him about the fate of another Chicago boy, Emmitt Till, brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman? Or should I tell him about Marcus Dixon, a high school star athlete and honors student in Georgia who was accused of raping a white classmate and acquitted in 20 minutes, but was still sentenced to 10 years in prison for statutory rape?

I wonder if I should emphasize that my son's safety ultimately may not be a matter of avoiding certain types of people. but also certain situations. Truth is, getting caught in a compromising position with a black girl does not hold the same potential ramifications as being caught with a white one.

I'll give my son a set of rules

As for safety from the police, don't black cops, not just white ones, kill black men? Still, I can't help but wonder why I've never seen or read a story about a group of white or black cops who shot down a white man when he reached for his wallet or keys, or because they thought he might have had a gun. Our black boys and men seem to die with disconcerting regularity at the hands of cops with no explanation other than they matched the description of "a male black, average height, wearing dark clothing."

I think I'll drill into my son a set of rules, a guidebook to his dealings with both the police and the girls:

"Move slowly. Don't make any sudden moves. Speak politely and respectfully. Don't get smart, even if you're not doing anything wrong. It's still no guarantee, but it could greatly improve your chances of survival.

"Don't be in a room by yourself with a white girl. Don't go to any girl's house -- white or black -- when her parents are not home. Don't be stupid. When a woman says no, she means no."

Most loved/hated person in America

Above all, I will tell my son to remember that he is a black man, and people will see him as a threat, sometimes by his presence alone. I will tell him that as a black man, he is the most loved and most hated person in America, praised on athletic fields, cheered for his musical skills, but far too quickly jeered, imprisoned, castigated and murdered.

I also will teach him that love knows no color, but some people will hate him because of his. I will warn him against being part of a culture or crowd that believes the terrorization of women is fun and games. I hope to deeply ingrain in him a love and respect for women, no matter what color, to not simply see them as objects put on this earth for his satisfaction. I will teach him to treat all women the way he would want me, his sister, his aunts or his grandmother to be treated.

But for now, I will hug and kiss him. I will wipe his runny nose, fix his scrapes and chastise him for running through the house.

And, I suspect, I will watch with mixed emotions as my little boy's baby face one day sprouts peach fuzz, arousing my fears of far greater hurts to come than a scraped knee.



To listen to a podcast of this column and read an interview I did with the University of Illinois Laboratory High School newspaper about this article, click on the link below:
http://www.uni.illinois.edu/og/multimedia/2006/12/q-unis-monica-fountain-bringing

Still Searching

In 2005, the Washington Post published an essay by my husband John W. Fountain entitled "No Place for Me." The essay literally went around the world, published in newspapers across the country, overseas and forwarded via email to thousands. The impact of the essay and the discussion that it generated were phenomenal. John received thousands of emails from people of every denomination (even atheist), race and walk of life.

Below is an excerpt from the original essay (please click "No Place for Me" to read the full essay) and some recent poetic thoughts from John.

MRF

“…I am the grandson of a pastor and am myself a licensed minister. I love God and I love the church. I know church-speak and feel as comfortable shouting hallelujahs and amens and lifting my hands in the sanctuary as I do putting on my socks.

Yet I now feel disconnected. I am disconnected. Not necessarily from God, but from the church.

Somewhere along the way, for us, for me, the church -- the collective of black churches of the Christian faith, regardless of denomination -- lost its meaning, its relevance. It seems to have no discernible message for what ails the 21st-century black male soul…”

From Washington Post essay “No Place for Me” by John W. Fountain

Still Searching for the Church I Once Knew
By John W. Fountain

I sit here, no place for me
The sanctuary filled with psalm and praise,
though I am mostly in a haze
Stuck between the memories of times past
When the spirit was high
When I stood on Sunday's
Clinging to my last
Hope
Of one-suit days
And heart-felt praise
And yet, I sit dazed
Feeling like a fish out of water
Like a son with no father
Under the incandescent lights
Pews half filled
The usual sights
And yet I feel here
So un-Christ like

Noise
And rhythm and motion
Yet no plan for the sick,
The widows
The poor
For brothers who need so much more

Just commotion

And yet,
I love this place
Where I found grace and the wisdom of the church mothers
Who mothered me
And fathered me
A spiritual son to maturity
But now full grown
It feels so wrong
Even as my feet pat to song
Another song
Ringing: “Thank the Lord for Jesus”
Everybody singing
Everybody singing
Just singing
Just singing
Just
Singing
Just
Sing-ing
...Just.

Toy Guns Not Child's Play

Brother to Brother Column

By John W. Fountain

My son Malik’s big brown eyes lit up as the woman, a distant relative, handed him a gift, still tightly packaged and glistening in the sun as children at our family reunion in Indianapolis, frolicked on a summer afternoon, their voices drifting on a breeze.

Malik tightly held the toy in his spidery fingers as she walked away. By the time we arrived most of the assortment of gifts annually given to children had been dispensed. My son’s face shone with glee. Mine twisted.

“Uh, I’m sorry Malik, but uh, you can’t have that.”

“Why not?” my son asked, staring up at me.

“Because…,” I said, “Because it’s a gun.”

“But it’s only a water gun, Daddy,” Malik responded, not loosening his grip. “What’s wrong with a water gun?”

“It’s a gun, Malik. You can’t have guns,” I said, though internally, I was at war: My angst over guns marked by my wife’s and my decision that our children should not have guns of any kind versus the innocence of a gift that only shoots water, given to a son to whom I would gladly give the world.

It is not as much opposition to guns as it is to gun violence, though some might say they are the same. As a former Chicago crime reporter, I have witnessed the toll of guns in the hands of young men with hair-trigger tempers and a moral void that enables them to kill and kill again.

I have witnessed a summer’s weekend carnage inside the Cook County coroner’s deepfreeze filled with cold, lifeless bodies of young black men wearing orange toe tags. I have stood at the edge of a pool of blood on a basketball court and looked into the aching eyes of mothers and fathers, written the public epitaphs of far more young victims of gun violence than I care to recollect.

Guns don’t shoot people—people do. I know, I know. But what I also came to know, growing up on the West Side, is that guns in the hands of young men who looked like me led to the premature demise of so many young men who looked like me. And as a man, I came to believe that unrestricted access to guns is one thing. But this is another: A culture of misogyny, self-hatred and the absence of moral lessons—chief among them, “Thou shalt not kill”—a culture that inevitably produces calloused young killers.

I am not anti-gun as much as I am pro-life—the lives of my son, and my daughter, and my neighbors’ sons and daughters. And our stance reflects a belief that no matter how much we as a people march, or call for stricter gun laws or more police—that unless we do something to change the culture, we can only expect more of the same. That our greatest threat is not the enemy from without but within. That ultimately we must heal ourselves.

We see our ban as one small step in raising a black boy who respects the sanctity of human life and grows up to be a black man.

Together, Malik and I walked over to a picnic table where I spotted the relative who had given him the gun.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Uh, yes,” I said, “It’s the gun. He can’t have a gun.”

I instructed Malik to hand it back. A few moments later, after rifling through a bag of leftover gifts, she emerged with a package of little lizards—perfect. Malik smiled.

Inside I still wondered whether I had done the right thing, until we returned home that evening and the television blared with news of more shootings, this time of three boys fatally shot while sitting in a car in Maywood. And I knew I had.

Living Water - Toy Gun - John W. Fountain

John "The Baptist"

Brother to Brother Column

John "The Baptist"




By John W. Fountain

Early one Sunday afternoon, I walked to the front of the church, toward the pulpit, to have words at the behest of my grandfather, the pastor.
Unsure of what to say, I could still hear the words of my dearly departed grandmother’s spirit-filled voice ringing inside my head: “Let the Lord use you, John Wesley.”

I stood before the small congregation and mouthed the proper honors to the pastor, the assistant pastor, the deacons and such… Then came my sacrilege.

“You know,” I said, “they told me as a child that only (people in our denomination) were going to heaven.” Then I dropped the bomb: “I guess I’m on my way to hell… because I’m Baptist.”

There was a collective gasp, then laughter.

“No, uh, I’m not,” I declared, laughing. “I’m not going to hell. The truth is, I have learned that all truly Christian churches are churches of God in Christ Jesus; and that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism…”

I left the pulpit to a chorus of Amen’s, though feeling uneasy, if not queasy, over what I had said—feeling like a religious misfit. I always have.

A Religious Misfit

Raised as a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal at a small family church in Chicago, I was often uncertain about their antics, about whether their demonstrations of the spirit were authentic. I was especially leery of the notion that everyone, except us, was going to hell as my “sanctified” family had assured.

As a boy, I wondered why it was “sin” to go to the movie theater, or for women to wear makeup or pants, or to listen to any music other than gospel. It seemed everything was sin, even dancing the boogaloo.

The problem with our Christian cousins—the Baptists—the saints said, was that they smoked cigarettes and drank liquor, partied on Saturday and praised on Sunday. And for it, Baptists were going to bust hell wide open, we had been assured. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what all that backbiting and gossiping I had witnessed among “the saints” would earn them in that great day.

Our negative view of Baptists wasn’t just their smoking, but their general so-called lack of commitment to a sin-free way of living 24-7.

As I grew older, I heeded my grandfather’s instruction to always find a church within my denomination in whatever new city life’s wind carried me. Usually, that meant simply thumbing through the yellow pages.

Along the way, I found good churches and wonderful God-fearing people. But I also found my faith challenged, perhaps none more than by my wife—a good Christian woman who happened to be Baptist. She challenged me less by what she said and more by how she lived. Raised by Baptist parents, she grew up in her father’s church. Her daily walk with Christ seemed to reflect a deep commitment and yet liberty that I had never known. It was clear to me that her conception of who she was in Christ was not based on denomination or religion, but on relationship, on the principle of God’s grace and love and willful obedience to His word.


The Letter

That was what I was trying to express that Sunday. Later that week, I got an email from a sister who had been in the congregation:

“I was glad to hear you make the statement in the pulpit Sunday that you are a Baptist and are not going to hell,” she wrote. “I wished that my husband could hear you.”

He had been coming to church after his mother died and was “emotionally distraught and felt the need to get closer to God.

“He was doing pretty well for a while coming to church with me on Sundays. Then a comment was made by someone in the church (I'm not going to mention the name) that Baptists were no good. …I explained to him that the comment was the person's opinion. …He stopped going to church altogether.

“I wished that he could have heard you today…” the note ended. “You hit the mark today!”

Still, I found no rejoicing. For the cold truth was that by the time of my proclamation, this sister’s husband was dead—and he had died apparently mortally misled about the gift of eternal life.

That saddens me. But what chills me to the bone is to ponder the fate of those who have misled, or who continue to mislead others down the path of religion rather than into relationship with Christ.

Lost in Space

Brother to Brother Column

Lost In Space




By John W. Fountain

Man, the brother could play. His fingers floated effortlessly, the sounds of the instrument that he must have been born to play, lifting the saints in song and foot-stomping praise that could make the walls sometimes seem as if they were crumbling down.

A good family man, he was handsome, articulate and devout. He and I were brothers in Christ—brothers at a branch of Zion in a city where we once attended the same church with our families, brothers in the struggle.

So I sat stunned for a while, years later, while visiting another brother in Christ as he conveyed to me the sad news. The news that our brother had disappeared—from the church, from his musical perch, from his deaconship, but most importantly from his home, his family.

Only more disturbing was the news that he had gotten ensnared by an old drug habit and was reportedly living somewhere on the street, exact whereabouts unknown. Most disturbing was that I also knew that none of his “brothers” who worshipped with him, broke bread, and fellowshipped with him had gone looking for him, nor would they.

Endangered Species

Such is the fate of lost souls. Of men who stumble and stray from that narrow path and who find ourselves lost in space.

But it has unfortunately become the lot of the lost to find their way back to the peace of emerald pastures where His still waters still flow. Except, so many cannot—will not—and seem destined to be forever lost prodigals, unless there is some beacon to guide—lead—them, us, safely back home.

I see them. On street corners, staggering in the old Chicago West Side neighborhood where I grew up, inebriated, dazed by substance and by circumstance, by the ill-decisions that can land a brother jobless, education-less and hopeless. That can leave a brother stifled sometimes by our own past irresponsibility, addictions and demons that gnaw at our psyches and souls.

I have seen them—us—in a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter where I and another brother once held bible study, in other shelters I have visited across this country and even here in Chicago, in the stares of black men wearing orange suits on a prison work line in a small prairie town. I have seen them, staring out from prison bars, separated by time and space—a nation of men who too often by our own hands have rendered ourselves an endangered species.

For despite racial discrimination and the difficulties of climbing from the pit of paltry socioeconomic circumstance, I, for one, know that we as black men have no excuses.

Adams Where art Thou?

What I also believe is inexcusable is the ease with which we in the church discard men who were one day our “brothers” and whom we soon forget the next day because of their own inner turmoil and demons with which they wrestle, and which sometimes win, cause them—us—to be lost again, swirling in pitch black spaces, in far-from-home places.

Inexcusable is the lack of empathy or grace. Inexcusable are the tongues too quick to assess a wayward brother’s former healthy spiritual state or conscientious commitment and to relegate him to all along having been a pretender of the faith to have now fallen back to his previous sinful state. Inexcusable is the sense that those men who remain in the fold are somehow better, are somehow not without their own sins and struggles—men who are merely constant redeemers of the coupon called grace. He is a God who, according to Genesis 3:8-9, went calling out to Adam after he had sinned, seeking Him to move from the place of shame and sin to repentance and restoration.

Which of us will do His beckoning now? Adams, where art thou?

How many times, I have thought about my brother, or been moved to tears by the loss of his family, by memories of his faithfulness and the light of sobriety and hope and wellness I remember seeing in his eyes. I have wondered whether he might, like the biblical Prodigal Son, come to himself.

If I close my eyes, I can still see him playing, still hear the music emanating from his God-inspired soul. And I pray for his return, not to that church in that city now far away where we once worshipped together, but to the fellowship of the body of Christ, to his wife and to his beautiful family.

And to that end, I also pray that the Lord will send a few faithful men to help redeem those brothers lost in space.

Running for My Life

Brother to Brother Column

Running for My Life

By John W. Fountain

It’s almost winter now. Sweat pours like rivers of water as I pedal on the Lifecycle, my white, blue-striped towel draped over the bar to catch at least some of my perspiration. My music rings in my ears and I am focused on the task at hand. This is my morning ritual.

I am joined at my local gym by other like-minded, middle-aged folks battling the bulge and seeking to extract from faithful exercise all of its health benefits. But inasmuch as I have come to recognize the regulars, I cannot shake from my mind and soul those who are not here, or the visions of those black men left behind—those brothers for whom life has become a swamp, or whom the scars of life, in many ways, has left debilitated or crippled.

I know I could be one of them. I know that in so many ways I am like them, a glaring statistic, whether on this side of the grave or the other. And I know that after having survived life in the ‘hood, and even after having laid hold on my slice of the American dream, I am still running for my life.

THE SWAMP

I am a black man in an unforgiving land—where we lead the pack in heart attack and stroke and in the shortness of lifespan. And I am still honing my plan for survival.

On the physical side, I have found a community of wellness—medical Web sites and public dossiers on nutrition, herbs and supplements, on the importance of getting a routine physical, of not smoking. But on the spiritual side, I have found no single relevant and credible source for what ails me as a black man in America, where the toll of slights, innuendo and systemic racial friction and discrimination that accounts for much of the stress that leads so many of us to alcoholism, drug abuse and ill health—to the swamp.

The swamp. It is the place where some black men lie, where some of us cry in alcoholic tears, or writhe with addiction and fears. A place of darkness, where we teeter or too often are trapped, in part, by our inability to confide, even to each other, our failings, faults, foibles and fears through which we might find some solace, if not also some measure of healing from a group of brothers more bent on love and grace than on condemnation, criticism and reminding us of our mistakes.

OUR HOPE IN GOD NOT MAN

Some would point me—us—toward “the church,” to the Lord’s House. It would seem a logical place for the healing of the souls of black men. But I—we—have gone there. Many of us were raised there. Saved there—and so many of us have come to find no balm there.

Even as I reflect over my 48 years, as the grandson of a Holiness pastor, I can recount few times that I found in my fellowship with men within the church the kind of nurturing, intimate, truth-sharing and real talk that might feed me in a spiritual sense beyond the platitudes and church-speak usually uttered in between half-sung sermons. And yet, I must hold fast to hope.

A hope that lies in the root of faith I saw in my grandmother and the church mothers whose prayers rose like the sun each morning; in my memories of their tenderness and also the love I felt when they stared into my brown eyes and saw all of my potential as a boy, as a man. It is a hope lies in having witnessed as a boy the fervent prayers of my grandmother answered and also in the truth that my hope—our hope, brothers—is in God, not in man.

So rather than leading you to “the church,” will you follow me—a sinful man, a brother with some issues, a brother with some struggles, a brother with some hurts, a brother who has made some mistakes in his life, a brother with failings, faults, flaws and fears—to the cross?

We need not go to church to do so. We need only to go to Him, down that short pathway toward repentance on our knees in prayer—in your closet, bedroom, living room—and beginning anew the journey of fellowship with God through His son Jesus Christ who needs not man nor building to heal us.

Inasmuch as my morning exercise is my physical medicine—part of my daily prescription against high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease—I know that it is time to return fully and completely to the cross for the most essential part of me. And I am running—back to the cross—for my life.

Brother to Brother is an occasional column on At the Well dealing with men and faith.