A CONVERSATION ON RACE
Black Fathers Speak Out by Monica Croom
Recent tragic events have fostered valuable discussions on race in Atlanta and beyond. Three local Black fathers share their perspectives on raising their children. Also, an area pastor talks with Atlanta Parent about racism. Brian Anthony Williams During a recent phone call, my father and I drifted into a conversation about our nation’s long history of racial injustice. Moving from fury to heartbreak, my father described the myriad of emotions he experienced as a Black man living in the Jim Crow South during the middle of the twentieth century. At the top of this list was fear: the fear that his children and grandchildren would experience the same world. While I know our nation has changed since the mid-1900s, I also understand the power of systemic racism and its persistent influence on the lives of my children. In many ways, my father’s nightmares are my children’s reality. As their father, I cannot simply teach my children to reach for their dreams and aspirations. I must also prepare them to navigate and, when possible, dismantle systems of racial inequality that seek to limit their possibilities and diminish the humanity. What does that mean? It means that I don’t tell my children to “be good” or to “listen to their teachers” when I drop them at school. Instead, I tell them to “ask good questions.” I know that as children of color in the United States, their ability to ask critical questions will serve them better than blind obedience to the authority to unjust laws. It means that I model ways to challenge stereotypes designed to place boundaries on their lives. My children know that their father has skydived from airplanes, camped in the Namibian bush, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, and done things that we are told that Black people just don’t do. Finally, it means that I must make the invisible systems of racial oppression visible by talking with my children about 12 Atlanta Parent August 2020
While I know our nation has changed since the mid-1900s, I also understand the power of systemic racism and its persistent influence on the lives of my children. the realities of their world and the things that they can do to change it. I have inherited my father’s dream for a better tomorrow for my children, and I am doing everything in my power to prepare my children with the tools needed to build it.
Brian Anthony Williams is dad of two and Clinical Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at Georgia State, and Director of the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence. atlantaparent.com
