A couple of years back I insensitively scolded a friend of mine for helicopter-parenting her daughter. The then 12-year old had not yet been allowed to go by herself to the corner store, much less take a public bus. “What are you worried about, here in Beaverton?” (Middle-class suburb of Portland, for the uninitiated….) “Hanin wears her Hijab,” was the answer.

Parenting is hard enough. Parenting a child who is potentially exposed to harassment, attacks or, in the worst cases, death when simply being in the public sphere, is inconceivable to me. How do you live with the constant anxiety? How do you prepare them for what awaits them once they leave the house? How can despair be held in check?

The thoughts were triggered by reading the piece below by Aziza Barnes, a forceful, uncompromising, unstoppable young voice who either invents or remembers a parent who so wishes one could simply look away, in her title.

Knowing 911 by heart at the age of 2.

The killings of Justine Damond, Keith Lamont Scott, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, to name just the ones that became famous because we saw the videos that showed they were either children and/or running away, are back in my thoughts after the recent tragedy involving Stephon Clark. Shot multiple times in the back, while holding a cell phone claimed to have been mistaken for a weapon, in his grandma’s yard. And then this:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-stephon-clark-video-mute-20180331-story.html

What do you tell your children?