It's not easy.
We want our daughters to be women that respect themselves.
We want our sons to be men that want their freedom, that respect their women.
I remember in my social problems class two suburban white kids fixed their mouths to say
"Parents don't give them enough attention"
Well, what exactly can a mother do once her child leaves the house?
Once they step foot into reality they are their own person.
My mother has raised a son, and I swear it was the hardest years of her life.
She warned him, she punished him, she helped him, she medicated him, she isolated him, she nursed him, she wrote him, she visited him.
A mothers love can only go so far.
She wondered where she went wrong when she handled everything perfectly, but she never gave up on him.
But it's hard for a woman to raise a man, when all the men around him have been in the same situations he's tempted by, and somehow they've all lived to tell the tale.
The streets have a hold on our black men.
And as much as we want them to learn to love their lives, they never know until its taken away by a bullet or a sentencing.