Let me start this out by saying that I love my family. Ok, that’s my disclaimer.

The people that share my DNA and the few people that are married to them are the most stuck up and bourgeois (that’s ‘boo-gee’ for those of you that don’t know) people that I have ever encountered in my life. I have always know this … it’s like they all made it somewhere and totally and completely forgotten where they came from. But that is off the subject. I just had a conversation with a member of my family that reminded me that there are certain things that I can’t talk to them about.  

We were discussing her stepson, my cousin, and the fact that “all he wants to do is sit around and get high all the time” (which I don’t believe is true, but anyway…) So in the conversation my aunt says that my cousin’s mother is just tired of him and he needs to get his sh*t together. Somewhere in there I made the observation that we are, and have to be, as parents, harder on our sons than we are on our daughters because it is harder out there for men. What did I say that for????? She said that she believes that if you go out there and show that you are about your business and you really want  to get a job, its not hard out there. This was the point where I had to tell her exactly what it is that I believe.

I truly believe that in the world, in society (not just in the work world) it is hard for a Black man. Now please do not think that I am about to go off on this whole “holding the Black man down” crap (which she thought I was saying) because I am not. What I am saying is this … even the highest paid business professionals (unless they are walking around in a suit 24-7-365) have to work hard to prove themselves, to fight the preconceived notions that society has about Black men, and to fight the stereotypes.

Do you know that this woman ripped me a new one?!  Like she really went off on me and told me that my belief was crap and that she believed that I was just a product of my environment. WHOA! SO at this point I asked her what was wrong with my environment, and she goes on to tell me that I am so smart that there is no reason why I am not somewhere in corporate America with 99+ people working under me. Actually, there is exactly 1 reason why I’m not … because that is NOT the life that I want for myself. Corporate America is not for everyone …  everyone does not have those suit and tie dreams, and please know that I have never, ever, ever aspired to do that whole suit and tie, Corporate America, 9-5 nonsense.

I stand firmly on what I believe, especially as a mother with a son. The way that things stand right now, people really only expect our Black young men to grow up to be either a sports icon or a statistic. I don’t want my son to be a statistic. But no matter what he chooses to do, he will get the looks and the stares and the mistreatment. He could have a million dollars in the bank, but if he walks into Jared’s or Tiffany & Co. dressed in some “trendy” “hip hop” clothes, he would get a funny look or 2. I watched my own mother pass judgment on someone in a somewhat similar situation a few years ago.

We were driving down the street and driving in an SUV beside us was a young Black man. He was wearing a baseball cap, had on some sunglasses, had his music playing loud, and was cruising. She goes off on this whole tangent about him being a thug and everything else under the sun. My response was “for all you know, that man could be the VP of Operations at IBM”. How can you make such assumptions? And how can someone else be so blind about the fact that this happens to people?

My children’s father had neat, well kept, shoulder length locs when we met, and up until 2 years ago. He is intelligent, well spoken, well versed, talented, has been in his career for 13 years, and knows his sh*t. He doesn’t dress like a thug, a hood, a rapper, a basketball player or anyone else that you see in the mainstream- he’s a jeans and tshirt, or jeans and polo kind of guy. I have witnessed with my own eyes the way people looked at him before he opened his mouth and disproved what opinions people had already formed about him based on his appearance. So I even posed this scenario to my aunt and asked her what that was. She didn’t answer me, instead saying that we should just agree to disagree.

BLAH!!

And so I ask you … especially the men out there. How do you feel? Is it harder out there for you because you are fighting the stereotypes? PLEASE tell me if I am wrong because I don’t want to instill something wrong in my son.