At Mama's Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White by April Ryan

I enjoy April Ryan's work as a reporter and when I heard this book was coming out I new I would want to read it.
For the sake of full disclosure I am a white woman and a mother. I am fully aware that even though I face many of the challenges women in general face, I have a privilege having white skin provides me with. Being a mother is why I wanted to read this is I want to understand better. My oldest child, he is 25, is a young black man. My first marriage was to a black man and while I left that marriage battered I left it with a great gift too, a son. From the very beginning people looked at us sideways, or said things to us, and it was clear seeing this white woman with the little baby who clearly wasn't white caused people to have feelings about us. Now that we live on opposite side of the country and he is a man he no longer walks down the street with me holding his hand and so the protection provided him by the color of my skin is no longer with him. He doesn't wear a sign letting people know his mother is white. I worry about him and have had conversations with him about how to handle it if he should ever have an interaction with the police so that he can walk away from it whole and unharmed. I don't have to have the same conversation with my younger son who is 11 and is white, a child from my marriage to a white man almost 20 years ago. But I do have conversations with him and with my 16 year old daughter about why we treat everyone with respect until they do something to us to no longer deserve it and why things are harder for their brother just because he doesn't share their skin color. With the rise of killings of unarmed black men I can't help but worry about my oldest. But even with that history, I can't fully know what it is like to be in the skin of black mothers because they face challenges I don't. But I want to know. I want to understand. I want to because understanding will help me be a better ally but also give me the vocabulary to combat hate and ugliness. So that is where I was coming from when I picked up this book.

There are two quotes that sum up why this book is so important a read. It isn't a book only for black women, or even just for women. It is powerfully important for all people to bridge the divide between communities.

First from Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's mother "The country needs more compassion" hurt is universal, "A lot of times people get caught up around 'Was he Black or White?' 'Was he Hispanic?' It really does not matter, somebody has a loss. Somebody is hurting."

Second from actress Rae Dawn Chong "Well, today you can die being Black, just standing somewhere in public, you can die. That is ridiculous and tragic and very wrong, and I know that if White children, men and boys, and women were suffering like this, there would be massive change immediately."

Both are so true and the message I think April Ryan is trying to send with her work on this book. When a child is lost someone is hurting, so why does it matter if he was White, Black, or Hispanic? But it does because for now, until changes happen, deep systemic changes, the suffering of white mothers is treated like much more of a crisis and generates more public outcry. And so until that isn't the case anymore the color of the child will continue to be a topic for discussion.

In this book April shares some of her own feelings with race, her mother's role in her life, and her role as a mother who is raising her girls without their father. She opens herself to the reader and shares with us stories shared with her by others. Topics such as a mother's strength, faith, challenges, and activism. Some of her interviewees are Elijah Cummings, President Obama, and Marilyn Mosby.

Not a long book but much more powerful than the number of pages would suggest.

(Finished February 19, 2017)