The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Jan Landis,
Portland, OR
Our family raised a Black boy, along with our own 5 children. It always amused me when I cleaned the tub to see tiny black curls alongside all of our straight hairs:) We had a wonderful time getting to know him.
Darius Tornes,
Jackson, MS.
Every time I go to the store people be keep on eye on me. They follow me around. I’m just trying to buy some now or laters. The people who work at the store tell me to take out my pockets to see if I’m trying to steal things. I even got the cops called on me because I wouldn’t take my pockets out to let the workers look at them. Not everyone black person is a thug theft etc. I always pay for things when i go to the store. My mom didn’t raise me like that. My mom raised me to be myself.
Kevin Browne ,
Submitted via Twitter: @drbrowne
#TheRaceCardProject
“Black Boy” for Michele
by: Kevin A. Browne
I was grateful; granny was prophetic,
almost making me out of clay,
caressing my tar with old love.
black before it was a color.
we come from an oily family,
our skins sticky to the touch.
we, who gushed from the oilfields:
she didn’t want me digging holes.
she didn’t want us digging holes.
she remains, now, a 45 minute recording—
my own ghost in the machine—that I listen to often,
but not often enough.
she named me.
I think it was so that every time I say my name,
I say it with her tongue:
black boy.
Mary Barnett,
NEWBURY PARK, CA
I was about 11 02 12. Mary Penn Carter and I were playing in a section of woods in Danville, Virgina that we called Tarzan’s Chamber beause we would swing on vines fro, tree to tree. This days from boys who were friends from school tied Mary Penn so her feet were a few inches off the ground & she hung there. Then they made us roll down a very steep hill. By now we were really scared. 4 black boys met us at the bottom of the hill, offered to walk us home. They did. We talked like kids will. At it was the first chink in our shell of bias.
Sylvia Potter,
Uk
The sort of appearance that you are supposed to be wary of. Politely offered to help, carried my case up the stairs.
Paula Gaehring,
Haddon Heights, NJ.
Have taught in Philadelphia and now have students from Camden, NJ. So few of them have good male role models in their lives. Most are raised by moms and grandmoms doing their best but it is not the same as having dads, granddads and uncles in their lives. I wish I could give that to my students so they’d feel better about themselves.
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