Vanessa Geffrard

As a Black woman with two Black teenage sons, I know that America is not my home. Home is where you feel safe and where you belong. It is a place where my sons could walk free without free or trepidation. They are Sankofa birds who are learning how to fly forward across this red, white, and blue landscape with rivers that run deep with the blood of innocent black and brown people while hopelessly keeping their heads turned in search of somewhere else. This feeling of Black restlessness, despair, frustration, and anger is not new. It always feels like our blood is on the leaves and at the roots, fertilizing the soil that feeds the American dream of white exceptionalism. In 1852, Frederick Douglass noted that slavery was the great sin and shame in America; today, it is oppression, and it is white supremacy, and it is injustice...

I have spent years helping my sons understand that for 400 years, Black people have tried to appeal to White America's humanity. We have preached love and practiced non-violence even in the face of hatred and terror. We worked within the system, played by the rules, colored within the lines while desperately trying to prove our worth. Our blood wrote America's history. We tilled the soil, raised the crops, tamed the underbrush; but, we were not supposed to survive. Yet we did not die. I tell my sons that they are strong. They are resilient. They are the descendants of men and women who chose survival as an act of rebellion.