Things I’ve Had To Tell My Black Nephew While Taking a Walk

“Don’t move your arms so much.”

“Don’t stop there.”

“Don’t walk so far ahead of me.”

“Don’t make eye contact with that man.”

“Don’t point at that car.”

Every evening once the sun goes down, my nephew and I go for a walk around our neighborhood. It’s not the most ideal time of the day to do it, but we live in a city where it’s hot almost year round so walking when the sun is out, would certainly be cut short.

As a young woman, I’m very familiar with the precautions I need to take when walking around at night. Keep my phone on at all times, carry some sort of protection, and never take the same route two days in a row. These precautions are to ensure I’m not assaulted or followed by some creepy man trying to pick me up and after 23 years on this earth, they’ve become second nature to me. But for my twelve year old nephew who often has trouble picking up on social cues, the precautions I have to take with him are different.

Because he is Black, I constantly have to be aware of the way others perceive him when we’re walking because it’s not something he is aware of himself. The other night as we walked on the grass near the school across from our house, a cop car drove past us and every single muscle in my body tensed. My nephew, blissfully unaware, started to cross in the middle of the street rather than at the stop sign at the end of the street. He thought nothing of it because of course we would cross in the middle of the street since the grass on the other side was too high to walk through comfortably. But I had to tell him to wait until the cop turned the corner and out of sight, so we weren’t stopped for jaywalking.

A few minutes later, my nephew began singing a song to himself and moving his hands to the lyrics. A car passed us at the moment he was gesturing a little too hard.

“Don’t move your hands so much,” I told him. He obliged but quickly forgot and began doing it again not a minute later. Another car passed.

Every movement he made, I thought about how his hand motions could be mistaken for him holding or pointing something in the dark. I thought of how simple movements like his had resulted in the death of Tamir Rice, a boy the same age as him who had been playing with a BB gun in a park.

Or Philando Castile who had reached for his wallet during a traffic stop.

Or Stephon Clark who had been holding a cellphone in his own backyard.

Usually we can go a night without me having to give him too many instructions, but that night my nerves were on edge. When we got back home, he walked into the bathroom and all but slammed the door. He didn’t understand why I was “nagging” him so much. He didn’t get what the big deal was about him gesturing along to a song or pointing to show me the cool bumper sticker on the back of someone’s car.

And the truth is, it shouldn’t be a big deal. He should be allowed to move energetically and be enthusiastic about the world around him without someone finding it threatening. He should be allowed to try to race me back to our house without someone questioning why he’s running. He should be allowed to live freely and without fear about how people will look at him. And I want that for him.

And I told him those things, but with it came the uncomfortable conversation about how the color of his skin meant he had to be more mindful of what he does. Not because of vanity, but for his safety.

It was the same conversation I had with his older brother and sister a few years before. Though I hate that talk because it feels too close to respectability politics and I know that the risk will be there whether they do everything right or not, as their aunt, I just need to know I’m doing all I can to protect them from an ugly world that doesn’t deserve their light.

I can only hope and pray that one day, I won’t have to have these conversations anymore.

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Thanks for reading!

-Chanté