Another Black Boy, Another Senseless Murder—When Will It Stop?

Pace University Football Player Danroy Henry, Jr.

By NICK CHILES

When will it stop? Another innocent black man killed by the cops. This time it was in Westchester County, New York, on the campus of Pace University. This time it was a football player, Danroy Henry, Jr., age 20, a junior business major and cornerback, out celebrating with friends and teammates at a local student hangout after a game during homecoming weekend. Gunned down. Just hours after having a pleasant post-game dinner with his parents at a campus pizzeria. They send their son off to party with his buddies and they never again see him alive. It breaks my heart. Of course, the accounts of the cops are in direct conflict with the accounts of the eyewitnesses, who say the young black man did nothing wrong. It seems like I’ve been reading this story for the entirety of my life. It gets written at least once a year, in some grief-stricken corner of the U.S., as a family cries out “Why?” and a squad of police officers shrug their shoulders and cloak their department in a shroud of obvious lies, as chronicled here in the New York Times.

Over the last couple of years, these stories have taken on a new meaning for me, a new urgency. Up until then, while my outrage was always pure and my disgust palpable, the details themselves were usually somewhat abstract. The menace was not something I carried with me. Yeah, I was a black man in America and understood that at any moment I could be staring into the dark muzzle of a cop’s service revolver. But I was young and imbued with the baseless invincibility and arrogance of youth. You know—who gonna check me, boo? And then, seemingly overnight, I became old and settled, a dad who spends most nights checking homework and watching soccer practice. Encounters with angry cops seemed as distant as the New York City bars and clubs I used to hit decades ago—though even that calm surrounding me was still probably baseless delusion.

But everything changed when my son started driving. Now he was out there in the world, a large black boy/man with swagger and a quick temper, a big brown magnet for police aggression. Suddenly, all those stories of black men gunned down rushed back like horror-movie monsters, haunting me in my dreams, waking me up in cold panics if I still hadn’t heard his car pull into the driveway. When I read the story of Danroy Henry in the New York Times a few days ago, I could feel a numbness slowly spreading over my limbs. Just hours before, I had received a text from my son, my own freshman engineering major and defensive lineman, informing me that he had returned safely to his Pennsylvania campus after a weekend spent hanging out in New York City with his football buddies from Lafayette College. Talk about hitting home. I realized that a campus only offers the illusion of safety. A campus and its surrounding towns still employ plenty of officers with service revolvers. My son is still a large black boy/man with swagger and a quick temper. The eruption at Pace is a reminder to me: A parent of a black boy/man in America never rests easy.

The Henry Family at Danroy's Memorial.

We must continue to cry out loudly, all of us, when the Danroy Henrys of our world meet such outrageous ends. Black men who made all the right choices, who did everything we asked of them, everything a young man in America is supposed to do. Snatched away. Stolen from us. Danroy was one of our princes. Gone. We can’t ever grow tired of the protest. We must close our eyes and step into the shoes of Danroy’s mom and dad, Angella and Danroy, Sr., allow ourselves for a moment to imagine that Danroy is ours. Let the rage wash over us. Let it propel all of us to form a chorus whose collective voice acts as a shout into the ear of every police officer in every city, every cop in a small town or on a college campus. If you take our boys from us, we will make sure that you are forever tormented by the vision of an angry mob, pointing a finger at you, calling you what you are. Murderer.

* * * * *

About Our MBB Contributor: Nick Chiles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestselling tome The Blueprint: A Plan for Living Above Life's Storms co-written with gospel legend Kirk Franklin. Nick also writes for several publications including Essence, where he frequently pens stories about fatherhood and manhood.  

If I Hear R. Kelly On My Radio One Mo’ ‘Gin…

Correct me if I’m wong, but wasn’t R. Kelly dragged to trial on charges he peed on and had sex with a 13-year-old? On tape? And wasn’t he the one who convinced R&B beauty Aaliyah to marry him at the tender age of 17—when he’d long been a grown man? And haven’t rumors of the Pied Piper of R&B having an appetite for under age girls been flying for years?


Then riddle me this, Batman: Why is it that every time R. Kelly so much as swallows his spit, black folks jump out of their seats and get all Beatles-style groupie on us—waving lighters in the air and singing his songs at the top of their lungs and screaming and crying tears of pure, unadulterated bliss? Can somebody—anybody—help me understand? Because I’m absolutely c.o.n.f.u.s.e.d. by it all.

As the mother of two young daughters, I can’t in good conscience buy R. Kelly records/listen to R. Kelly songs/go to R.Kelly concerts/watch R. Kelly videos and TV performances/support him in any kind of way with my mind, actions, thoughts, ears, and especially money, knowing that there is even a remote possibility that he pees on and has sex with teenagers for amusement. And sorry, but I can’t even begin to understand how we as a collective can bump his music and cheer him on. Did you see the audience at the 2010 Soul Train Music Awards last week? Folks were damn-near jumping on chairs—stilettos and tight dresses and tuxes and all—with grand amounts of glee as he sang a medley of his old and new hits.

It put me in the mind of this scene in “The Trial of R. Kelly,” an episode of the satirical cartoon The Boondocks. That Aaron McGruder—so subversive. So smart. So spot on. Witness:

Question: Isn’t it our duty to stand up for little black girls? Shouldn’t we be rallying against the very people who put our babies in harm’s way—or, worse, do them harm? When will we stand up as a collective and say, “Your fancy lawyer may have gotten you out of a helluva mess, but you don’t get to abuse young girls and keep eating off my support.” Like The Boondocks' Huey said: “What happened to standards? What happened to bare minimum?”

Yeah, yeah—you can argue the whole “let those without sin cast the first stone” and the “to forgive is divine” stuff all you want to. But how do you go about forgiving someone who refuses to acknowledge he did anything wrong? And, more importantly, does a short absence from the radio and awards shows mean you should forget?

I think not.

Stop letting ignorance win. 

With Catastrophe Looming, Let’s Hand African American Boys a Book

"In My Mind," by ZOBEL

By NICK CHILES

Have you ever spent time in a kindergarten classroom? The kiddies are unbelievably cute, with their bright eyes, big sloppy grins and all-around eagerness to please. But the thing that’s most striking about them is their excitement about learning. It’s like they know they are about to be handed the keys to unlock all the mysteries that swirl around them, the secrets to this vast and perplexing world that has confounded them for the first five years of their lives. If the class is diverse, you will notice that there is no gender- or race-specificity to this excitement. The white girls are just as excited as the black boys who are just as excited as the Asian boys who are just as excited as the black girls. Ask a question and most every hand shoots up to answer, each throbbing with an impatience to show the teacher—oh, the magical, beloved kindergarten teacher—how brilliant they are.

I was reminded of my forays into kindergarten land—both as a parent and as a longtime education reporter for a New York City daily newspaper—when I came across a set of statistics about black boys that were the most depressing numbers I have seen in a very long time (or at least since election night). Clearly, for black boys, some kind of poison invades their system soon after kindergarten. That kindergarten light in their eyes is snuffed like a candle. According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP):

• Only 12 percent of black male fourth graders performed at or above proficient levels in reading. (White males at the same grade level are at 38 percent proficiency.)
• Only 9 percent of black male eighth graders perform at or above the proficient level in reading. (For white males it is 33 percent.)
• Black males score an average of 104 points lower than white males on the SAT in reading.
• In 2008, black males ages 18 and up only accounted for 5 percent of the college population, while black males make up 36 percent of the prison population.

These statistics are so scary that they should be accompanied by a horror-movie soundtrack—the screeching violins that tell you Jason or Freddy Kruger is about to devour some comely blonde. These numbers point to a community whose very future is in peril, to an entire nature whose decline is spelled out with every unimaginable percentage. Less than one of every 10 eighth graders is a proficient reader? Really? If we don’t reverse this trend, all of our children and grandchildren will be grappling with its effects for much of this century and beyond. 

If we are going to halt the American slide into second-class-country status, we all must focus on this national crisis.

As the parent of three high-achieving children, I am convinced that the solution to this catastrophe is so simple that it almost brings tears to my eyes. The solution is a book. If we can develop a love of reading in these boys in the early years of their academic development, the arc of their entire lives changes, curving away from failure and disappointment and directly to success and achievement.

A book is inoculation against many of the dangers that a boy will face as he bobs and weaves his way through adolescence. I saw it happen with my own son, now an 18-year-old college freshman and engineering major. Once he latched on to reading as a little boy, his verbal and language skills soared, carrying him through those painful middle school years and the conflicts with teachers, adolescent idiocy, regrettable peer groups, and a raft of distractions. In high school, when football became a huge priority, he learned—while so many of his peers didn’t—that without performing in the classroom, he wouldn’t even get a chance to perform on the field. It was the rock-solid foundation he got through reading that sustained him, that buttressed everything he did in the classroom and on the all-important standardized tests.

Getting a child to enjoy reading is like handing him a winning lottery ticket, over and over again, every day of his life.

But, Lord, I know it’s not easy. I have gotten that message loud and clear with all of my children. The distractions that explode around us like land mines are almost impossible to stave off. Television, cell phones, texting, the Internet, those damn video games. The video games are fascinating, thrilling, addictive, toxic. Whenever I sat down with my son and allowed him to draw me into NFL Live or one of the boxing games on his Xbox, I marveled at how life-like and exciting the games were—and I thanked the Lord that nothing like that was around when I was his age, otherwise my life might have gone in another direction. As I write this, I just realized that my 11-year-old daughter, who is downright addicted to books—so addicted that we sometimes have to remind her to put the book down for a moment when she is crossing a street or walking across a parking lot—is entering her fifth straight hour playing some street racing video game on my wife’s iPad. It’s a Sunday afternoon and she hasn’t looked at a book yet. When I asked her why she was sitting on a throw pillow as she played, she grinned sheepishly (without taking her eyes and fingers off the screen) and said that her butt had started to hurt from sitting in the same spot so long. Yes, addictive and toxic.

But we can’t give up; we can’t let the distractions win. We have to keep reminding ourselves that if we can lure that 7- or 8-year-old boy into the pages of a book, where he might discover a world as transporting and magical as the images in that video game, we have just placed him squarely on a path to adult accomplishment. We have changed his life. This is about as close to a guarantee that we parents will ever be given. Let’s not blow it. The future of an entire nation is in our hands.

* * * * *

About Our MBB Contributor: Nick Chiles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestselling tome The Blueprint: A Plan for Living Above Life's Storms co-written with gospel legend Kirk Franklin. Nick also writes for several publications including Essence, where he frequently pens stories about fatherhood and manhood. 

Do You Realize How Motivated Stupid People Are? VOTE (With Our Babies In Mind)

10 Minutes from Alyssa Milano

Nope, I'm not going to use this space to lecture about how many of our people had their heads cracked open and hands chopped off and necks wrung behind voting. I'm not going to recall, either, how many women marched and beat their chests and suffered to get us our voting rights. I trust that my readers—who are super smart and super on it—don't need to be lectured about such things, because we all know that it would be so wrong on so many levels to let all that head cracking and hand chopping and neck wringing and marching and beating to have happened in vain. 

Nope. Instead, what I'd like to focus on is the importance of choice and values and voting your conscience—and using your ballot to affect change for the most vulnerable among us: our babies. Before you pull the lever/push a button/write a name in the voting booth today, consider supporting candidates who:

• Want your kid to have quality, affordable healthcare... Some 7.5 million children were uninsured last year. That is about one in 10 children. President Obama's health care legislation made it so that our kids can stay on insurance plans as dependents up to age 26, that they won't be excluded from coverage based on preexisting conditions, and we parents don't have to worry about lifetime benefit limits for their care. Any candidate invested in trying to dial this back need not have the job. (Learn more about Children’s Health Care.)

• Care about what your kid is eating... Nearly one in four children lives at risk of hunger. Meanwhile, one in three children in this country are either overweight or obese. Though Michele Obama has made child nutrition a priority and President Obama has pledged to spend an additional $10 billion on child nutrition over 10 years, Congress is trippin'—stalling on child nutrition legislation and trying to jack food stamps to fund the nutrition bill. (Learn more about Obesity and Hunger Reduction.)

• Want your kid to have a quality education... Only one in three fourth-graders, and one in three eighth-graders, reads at a proficient level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “Nation’s Report Card” administered by the Department of Education. Vote for the candidate who supports initiatives like Race to the Top and other meaningful legislation that moves beyond testing our kids to death and really focuses on giving our kids quality schooling. (Learn more about Quality Education for all Children.)

• Support real legislation that lifts our kids out of poverty... One in five children lived in poverty in 2009, according to the U.S. Census, and the poverty rate increased or stayed the same in every state last year. If they're talking all that "trickle down" mess and vowing to vote against Earned Income Tax Credits and the Child Tax Credit—solid relief for the middle class—vote for their opponent. With a quickness. (Learn more about Children and Poverty.)

I know for sure that there are many of us who are disenfranchised with the system, ticked off about the state of the economy, and desperate to feel, hear and see the changes we were promised. But shutting down or, worse, voting against your conscience to spite the people who couldn't undo in two years eight years worth of straight madness, is plain stupid. 

Be smart. 

Vote smart.

10 minutes, and you're helping make a difference.

(For more information about legislation that helps our kids and to figure out the candidates who would best help shepherd that legislation into law, check out Voices For America's Children, a child advocacy organization. This piece was written as part of VFAC's Vote Kids First Blog Carnival.)

Just Say "NO" To the Stereotyping of African American Parents and Other Moms and Dads Of Color

Like, what kid doesn’t dig the park? Mari loved the slide, you know? And the monkey bars. And especially when I pushed her on the swing. Her plea was stickier and sweeter and more delicious than a cherry pop: Higher, mommy! Higher! I want to kiss the sky…

I delighted in watching my baby jump and twirl and fly and pucker up toward the sunshine. Her happiness was infectious. But my hate for the park was equally passionate—searing. Particularly when visits with my then 2-year-old daughter fell outside of official playgroup playdates and it was just me and the kid and my swollen, pregnant belly and my elephant ankles and those eyes—those evil, prying, judgmental, better-than-thou eyes that, in a single glance, would betray the conspiratorial conversations The Playground Mafia dug into when they saw me and my chocolate beauty trotting up the walkway.

It never failed; I always got the distinct impression that neither my baby nor I was welcome there. It was all up in the icy glares. The side-eyes and whispers whenever I smiled in their direction or tried to make small talk. The rolling cloud of sensible shoes and mom jeans and crocheted sweaters that always seemed to stampede toward The Children of The Playground Mafia whenever my baby girl penetrated their invisible barrier bubbles.

Always—always—I’d act like it didn’t matter. For my baby’s sake. But on the walk home, I’d stew and silently wonder what, exactly, ran through their minds—their little, teeny weeny minds—when they saw me. Maybe they thought I was the nanny—untouchable and unworthy of conversation (unless they were looking for a new one, and then I’d get a fresh “family” card pressed into my palm. True story.). Maybe they thought I hitched a ride from nearby Newark, N.J., so that my kid could play in the “good” park. Maybe they thought I was a teenage mom, slumming off the system, popping out babies and intent on scaring all the good, hardworking white people at the park while I waited for their tax dollars to convert into my welfare check.

After a while, I stopped wasting precious brain matter trying to comprehend why The Playground Mafia acted the way they did to my daughter and me. It became painfully clear relatively quickly that it would never occur to them that I was a neighbor, who, while on maternity leave from a high-paying magazine gig, frequented my neighborhood park to escape endless reruns of Teletubbies and The Wiggles back at my more than half-million-dollar home, four blocks away.

It would never occur to them that I always bought my shrimp and Salmon and whiting at the local fish market and the French bread with the wickedly crusty crust from the local bakery and that my neighbors literally held vigil outside my house on block party afternoons, waiting to dig into my huge basket of fried chicken, hot and sweet.

It would never occur to them that I adored George Clooney and collecting art and throwing dinner parties and writing—that I was interesting and funny and smart and madly in love with my husband and growing family.

That I could love.

And was loved.

This, apparently, is not the stuff black folk are made of—at least not in the minds of some suburban white moms. Witness this blog post, written by a mom who got all freaked out when her son struck up an afternoon playground friendship with the son of a man she surmised was a “gang member”:

"How did you KNOW he was a gang member?” I can hear you asking from behind your computer monitor. I'll admit, I'm not exactly up on my "Signs Your Child's Friend's Dad Is A Gang Member" literature. Let's just say it seemed likely. There was the prison number tattooed on his neck, for example. And the cryptic, graffiti-like tattoos all over his arms. And the white tank top. And the baggy jeans. And the bandana. And the unlaced shoes. And the baseball cap worn sideways. If he wasn't a gang member, he definitely wanted people to think he was.

The writer goes on to chronicle how, even though the “gang member” tried to strike up a conversation with her—you know, what normal human beings tend to do when other human beings are around and the kids are playing together—her side of the talking stalled because she wasn’t “well-versed in gang member icebreakers” and she couldn’t think of anything to say to him beyond, “When’s the little guy’s initiation?”

Later, when the two scooped up their sons and tossed each other a “see ya,” the blogger considers telling the “gang member” how much she enjoyed the gang movie Colors, and silently wishes she had a camera to document the occasion so that years later, she could reminisce with her son about “that gang member” who pushed him on the swing. “Such a nice gang member…” she imagined she would say to her son as they flipped through their scrapbook of memories.

She and the posse in her comment section thought the blog post was humorous.

Laughing yet?

I’m not...

READ THE REST OF THIS POST ON THE MYBROWNBABY PARENTING POST PAGE AT PARENTING.COM. AND PLEASE DO LEAVE A COMMENT; WHEN WE RAISE OUR COLLECTIVE VOICE, BLACK MOMS ARE A MOVEMENT TO BE RECKONED WITH. BE THE CHANGE; SPEAK UP.

The Fabulous McGhee Sextuplets In All Their Chocolatey Goodness!

Photo by Peters Photography

Isn't this the most delicious picture you've EVER seen? Introducing The McGhee Sextuplets—Rozonno Jr., Isaac, Josiah, Elijah, Madison and Olivia—the four sons and two daughters of Mia and Rozonno McGhee. They look beautiful here, but so much better on the all new MyBrownBaby.com. CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS POST ABOUT THE MCGHEE SEXTUPLETS ON MYBROWNBABY.COM.

The babies were born in June and, after a several-months-long stay at the hospital, arrived to their Columbus, Ohio home in September. They are the first set of sextuplets to be born in Columbus, and only the second set in all of Ohio.

I do remember a time when the birth of this many babies at once was celebrated with a lifetime supply of diapers, formula, baby wipes, at least one super-sized mini-van, college scholarships and lots of cash money, dollar bills, y'all, from every baby company, TV station, and good-hearted person on the planet. I also remember that this kind of benevolence always seemed to be reserved for the Gosselins and Duggars and McCaugheys of the world, never for children who look like The McGhees. 

Seems things ain't changed with these chocolate beauties, either. 

Stories abound that when the McGhee sextuplets were born, they got six Buckeyes onesies from  Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee, and a certificate from the Columbus City Council honoring them as the city's first set of sextuplets. Six onesies and a piece of paper. 

Long. Blank. Stare.

A few more donations flowed in after the Columbus Dispatch did a story about the McGhees taking their six babies back to their two-bedroom home virtually empty-handed. Mia McGhee, who quit her job to care for her children while her husband makes a living from a self-owned carpet cleaning business, said she was "staying positive" and simply "happy" to finally "have a family."

Now, I was hopping all over the internet yesterday, reading stories about the family and particularly all the scary, jacked-up messages people were leaving in the comments sections (which can be almost as scary as a Klan rally). Folks were going IN on the family, saying they were looking for handouts and that they shouldn't have had all those babies if they couldn't take care of them, and that they should have saved up if they knew they had six kids coming, and telling them that they should go on welfare and stop begging—blah, blah, blah. What you should know, though, is that this couple got pregnant with their six babies while taking fertility drugs; their doctor suggested it after they had premature twins whom died after birth. When their doctor revealed there were six eggs in Mia's womb and offered to "reduce" the number, the McGhees didn't have the heart to abort any of their babies. So, despite the risk that they could lose them all, the couple chose to keep each and every one of their children, and each of them made it into this world. 

And the McGhees haven't asked anyone for so much as a baby wipe. 

Personally, though, I feel like they deserve so much more. Pampers? Johnson & Johnson? Abbott (the makers of Similac)? Toyota? Maybe y'all could scare up some of what the other families got when they produced their own Miracle Six families. Maybe Ohio State could take back those onesies and offer to let each of the McGhee children attend college for free when they graduate high school.

Maybe you and I could help these beautiful brown babies not only survive, but thrive.

To help out the family, you can make monetary donations to "The McGhee Trust Fund" at any Chase Bank location. Non-monetary donations can be sent to: IMPACT Attn: Tracy Taylor 700 Bryden Road, Columbus, OH 43205. You can also "like" the McGhee family's FaceBook page to show your support, send your well-wishes, and keep up with their story. 

Need inspiration? Go back to the top of this post and look at those angelic little brown faces again. Good grief, the McGhees do good work, don't they? God bless them—one and all.

{Don't forget to take the MyBrownBaby Survey—do it and I'll love you long time.}

Score Two In The Black Girl Battle Against Lazy Beauty Standards!

Sesame Street's "I Love My Hair" Puppet

Now, no one is suggesting that we African American moms exclusively count on TV, songs, movies and the like to make our babies feel good about themselves. But it would be extremely naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to suggest that the psyches of our girls aren’t affected by a constant barrage of media images that seek to set the standard for what’s right, what’s wrong and what we all need to fix to get to this stock version of “perfect.” It would be even dumber of us to suggest that non-black children aren't affected by this, either—that they don't come to some not-so-flattering conclusions about their African American counterparts when they have few to no references to refer to when forming those opinions.

So we black moms cloak our babies in the armor—ready them everyday for the battle against lazy beauty standards, pop culture ignorance, and outright black girl put-downs that seem to slap at them—and us!—around every stretch. In my daughters’ cases, I ended up making a border of picture frames filled with pictures of her family on the wall next to their cribs, so that they could see brown faces that look like theirs. I filled their bookshelves with as many books featuring black characters as I could find and requested that my friends do the same. They went to sleep listening to Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind & Fire and Satchmo and Kathleen Battle—artists with soulful voices and incredible, eclectic music filled with prideful messages that both our kids and we love to listen to. And Nick and I would whisper in their ears…you are the loveliest, prettiest, most deliciously chocolatey gifts from God any mommy and daddy could ask for.

But Lord, when we spend our days telling our daughters that their skin is beautiful and their hair is perfect exactly the way it grows out of their heads and their lips and nose and hips and booty are full of goodness and that they are, indeed, visible—that we see them, even if nobody else does—it does something to our girls’ psyche when someone other than their mamas says, “Hey, you’re pretty awesome just the way you are.”

Nobody tells little black girls such things.

But this week, two somebodies did...

To read this essay in its entirety, pop on over to the MyBrownBaby page on Parenting's The Parenting Post—and if you're so moved, please leave a comment. We need to show everyone—magazines, radio stations, ad agencies, companies who depend on our cash to stay alive—that black moms and our children MATTER, and I can't think of a better way to do that than by lifting our voices. 


Have a fantastic weekend everyone!

Standing "O" for the Black Dad Who Threatened His Daughter's Bullies!

Yes, I know I’ve warned before that we moms should reconsider just when, where, and how we should use our Wu Tang Clan-styled Samurai word swords when someone gets out of pocket with us. Hollering on folks—especially with the kids in tow—could leave both our babies and us vulnerable to the whims and violence of crazy folk, like the African American mom who got punched, stomped and cussed out by a man at a Georgia Cracker Barrel last year after she got on him for slamming a door in her 7-year-old’s face.

But sometimes, you just gotta go there. Last week, James Jones did. Pissed that a bunch of 7^th grade boys were physically and verbally harassing his 11-year-old disabled daughter—even going so far as to toss condoms in her hair—Jones stomped onto his kid’s bus and threatened to jack up er’body who could hear the words coming out of his mouth (bus driver included) if anyone even looked at his daughter crazy, much less put their hands on her again.

Now, seeing as he was cussing and threatened to “murder” children, he got arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing a school function and whatnot. But that’s a fine he says he’d be willing to pay if it means the little buzzards who were messing with his daughter know he’s coming for that ass if they ever again got outta pocket with his baby girl.

For the record, Nick and I are over here giving virtual fist bumps and standing “O’s” to Mr. Jones for being a helluva father and taking control of this whole bullying nonsense. Kids are being harassed and beat down and bullied to the point of suicide—all too many of them choosing extremes (harm to themselves, harm to others) rather than wait on the adults to do what needs to be done to put the bullies in their place and make the schools be accountable to the innocents. Remember Jaheem Herrera and Carl Walker-Hoover? 

Our kids need to know that their daddies have their back. And it is not lost on us that this is an African American father who stood up for his child—a man who, like us, gets really tired of the relentless “black fathers aren’t involved or are non-existent” meme that slaps at black dads at every turn.

And for the idiot “expert” at the end of the video who suggests the father was wrong and made his daughter feel weaker and helpless by taking charge of the situation rather than giving her the tools to handle the bullies on her own: Let’s put his daughter on a bus with a bunch of billy badasses and see how “empowered” she feels to have to handle that crap on her own. I bet you he’d be out there on the bus stop tomorrow morning with his Louisville Slugger, too. Trust me on this.

Check out the video...

We Need More Black Children's Books On Borders's Bookshelves NOW.

My neighborhood Borders was running a children’s book drive for a local hospital and since Denene loves the children and books, I offered to purchase two books for donation. Grateful I was participating, the cashier offered up a stack of books for me to choose from. And what do you know, not nan one of them—save for a lone "Princess and the Frog" book buried all the way in the back/bottom of the pile—featured children of color.

Not. One.

Now, you know how I do: I’m a huge proponent of children’s books featuring characters that look like my girlpies, and I’m especially gangsta about getting these books into the hands of ALL children, not just black kids (as chronicled in my post EVERYBODY Should Read Black Children’s Books). So I insisted that I be able to by-pass Borders's pre-selected (white-washed) offerings to select and donate a few of my favorite children’s books from the children’s section.

Problem was, they didn’t have any black children’s books. There was no "Ruby and the Booker Boys." No "Tar Beach." No "Wilhemina Rules." No "Pruella and the Boo Hag" or "Dancing in the Wings" or "Home Made Love." Not one book with a child of color—ANY color—up on those shelves, within arm’s reach for kids to grab and read and giggle at and enjoy. And with every second I had to dig, my anger became more palpable—much to the chagrin of the Borders employee charged with helping me pick books to donate.

Me: I’m not really clear why there aren’t any books for or about children of color here.

Borders Chick: Well, if no one buys them, we don’t order them.

Me: Well if they’re not here to buy, then it’s kinda hard for us to buy them, isn’t it?

Borders Chick: It’s headquarters that decides what books will be stocked, so my guess is they have more of a selection at Stonecrest Mall. (Note: This would be the “black” mall. About 40 minutes from where I and many other black moms who buy books for our children actually live.)

Me: *massive side-eye* I don’t live near Stonecrest. I live two minutes from this store.

Borders Chick: I found one! *triumphantly waving in my face a copy of Sharon Draper’s “Sassy,” which she dug from the back of a dark shelf near the floor. As if she'd just found the solution to world peace.* 

Me: *another massive side-eye and a lip twist* Y’all need to do better.

I was still ranting by the time I made it to the register with my book donation purchases—the lone copy of “Sassy,” and a copy of my latest book, “Miss You, Mina,” a tween book in the popular Scholastic Candy Apple series. (Amazingly, they had three copies in the Candy Apple section, but it took longer than it should have to convince another Borders Chick that I was the author and that it would be a good thing if I autographed my book.) While it is honorable that Borders was collecting books for kids, why didn’t it occur to them to include a mix of books that feature kids of all races—white, black, Latino, Asian, Indian or whatever?  And why should I have to drive 40 minutes to the “black” store to get black books for my kids? And good God, why was the Borders Chick STILL perpetuating the ridiculous notion that somehow, books featuring black children should only be purchased and read by black children?

“I mean, I’m buying 'Artemis Fowl'—arguably, a white book—for my daughter, who clearly is African American," I said, handing over my debit card to pay for the two black books and the third in the Artemis Fowl series, which Mari is completely flying through as I write this. "Why shouldn’t her kid read ‘Miss You, Mina?’” I demanded, jabbing my finger at the white woman waiting on line behind me, trying her best to pretend like she wasn’t listening to the conversation.

The cashier shrugged and mumbled something about corporate making those decisions and it all being out of her hands. Curiously, corporate didn’t seem to have a problem filling up the “African American Interests” section with a crap load of street fiction titles so risqué I had to steer Mari clear of it, lest her 11-year-old eyes got singed by shelf upon shelf of book covers featuring scantily-clad vixens and chocolate hot boys in compromising porn positions. Apparently, none of us should have to drive 40 minutes out of the way for the mess that makes us look like a bunch of sex-addicted, skank stripper hoes chasing random peen between drug deals and jail breaks. Nope: Those car rides, which use up a good $15 worth of gas, are reserved for $4.99 black children's books.

I’m. Tired. Of. This.

Exhausted, really.

Aren’t you?

And more importantly, what do we do about it? I’m open to suggestions…