Free Range Or Target Practice.

I don't really want to talk about Black Motherhood and our child rearing practices under a White gaze. I simultaneously appreciate and am left a tiny bit underwhelmed by the commentary of the childless. I am tired of the Black Mother Shaming. I am tired of the exaltation of tired love, exhausted grit, and under-educated make-do in an effort to subvert the discussion of systemic root causes. I am weary ~ to the seizing up of my entire nervous and cardiovascular system ~ of a dehumanized characterization of Black motherhood designed to portray us as nothing but animals acting on instinct.

I am numb from squashing anger about the way in which Black mother's decisions are scrutinized, evaluated and politicized for the purpose of continuing to enshrine White women's purity and perfection. I am ready ~ to the point of profanity ~ to rage about the advancement of sanctified White motherhood while the public at large gets to define, debate, ruminate, celebrate or denigrate every action a Black mother takes in public and then spread it like a shovel of shit across all of Black personhood.

I am fed up with the way in which our parenting revolves around camouflage and not character. Life or death. Clean Or Cranked. Street sweeper or barrister. Free Range or Target Practice. I am tired of people treating our children like products instead of people in process. I am tired of talking about women raising boys, women raising girls, women raising people.

Where are the men? Are Black women somehow naturally inclined towards parthenogenesis?

I am tired of the 
Tragic Single Mother, Tragic Battered Woman Mama, 
Tragic Out-Of-Touch-Wanna-Be-White Black Mama, 
Tragic Her-Husband-Righteous, Rich, Educated-But-Fucking-Every-White-Female-Behind-Her Back Mama, 
Tragic But-There-Are-Two-Mamas-So-That-Kid-Gonna-Be-Confused Mamas, 
Tragic Ghetto Mama, Tragic Crack Mama, Tragic Alcoholic Mama, 
Tragic Hoodoo-Killed-Some-Chickens-Made-The-Vegans-Mad Mama, 
Tragic That-Much-Jesus-Ain't-Good-For-Anyone Mama,
Tragic How-Many-Is-Too-Many Mama,
Tragic Inter-Racial Mama, Tragic InterRacial-Lesbian Single Mama, 
Tragic Oh-Shit-What-We-Gonna-Do-Wit-Two-Black-Mamas Mama, 
Tragic Poor-But-Got-Her-Kid-To-College Mama, 
Tragic Middle-Class-Move-Up-To-The-Next & Leave-Her-People-Behind Mama

I just want to be a Mama afforded the same right to invisibility and privacy every White woman assumes she has.

Girl, if I could get the childcare, I have a lot to write about Black parenting...beginning with a show on Nat Geo where they took a White family and dumped them among the Maasai and in two weeks the Elder Males had that child's ADHD cured. But, all that community, village raising children culture was systematically beaten out of us and belongs now to White families who sign up for National Geographic Reality Television shows.