During my pregnancy, I prayed for a girl because I knew that in many ways, the deck was stacked against black boys. Then, as now, African-American men had a higher mortality rate due to homicide, diseases such as hypertension and heart disease, and substance abuse.
In our New York City neighborhood, African-American boys fell prey to drugs and gang life that could lead to incarceration, regardless of how well they were raised. The most common cause of death for black males ages 15-19 was from gun violence, and they died from homicide a startling 46 times the rate of their white counterparts.
I never even considered a boy’s name during my pregnancy. But when I looked into the deep brown eyes of the boy born on Oct. 4, 1984, my heart melted. I knew Sama and I would be fine.
Last Sunday, George Will’s column in the Denver Post quoted Nathan Glazer, a Harvard professor known for making bold assumptions about the state of African-American single-parent homes. Glazer concludes that black adolescents without fathers equal “disorderly neighborhoods and schools.” He assumes that black children with single moms watch more television than white children, as though there are no white single moms. He repeats the stereotype that black single mothers are most often on welfare.
All of the black single mothers I know work, some in menial jobs and some as professionals. Being black and the product of a single-parent home need not doom a boy to poverty or crime.
It was all about balancing my career with mothering after my ex-husband abandoned the family when our son was a year old and died when he was 8. As Sama grew, I realized how challenging it is for single mothers to raise boys. What did I know about X-Men and Nintendo?
I cheered as he portrayed Malcolm X in a school program and won awards for science projects, all the while fearing what awaited him as he grew older. New York City was not the best place to raise a boy alone.
So in 1994, when the mayor offered buyouts to city employees, I moved us to Colorado. In Aurora, we found elementary schools with grassy playgrounds and middle schools with sports teams. On Sama’s first day of school, he met boys who are still his best friends.
I tried to understand his way of thinking as he grew from a playful boy into a teenager trying to break free from an overprotective mother. Mothers want to soul-search, which is the last thing boys want to do. So, when I wanted to know what he was thinking, I’d take us out driving, talk about everything else under the sun, and when he finally opened up, I’d pretend to be lost so we could have time to finish the conversation.
I was one of those moms sitting in the bleachers at Gateway High School football games while the snow piled up around us. It seemed like there was a section just for single mothers, where we cheered like maniacs, heckled the referees and probably embarrassed our sons.
As an HIV health educator since 1986, I made sure Sama knew the consequences of unsafe sex. One day, I came home from work to find a dozen or so opened condom packages on his bedroom floor. I thought of all the calm, rational things I would say when he got home. But when he walked in the door, I screamed, “Are you having sex?”
He laughed, took me to his bedroom window and pointed. About a dozen brightly colored condoms filled with snow were in the grass across the street. He had thrown them from his window in a snow-balloon fight.
I laughed and sighed with relief.
Mark Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Michigan, documented that single mothers work harder to compensate for being the only parent and that such effort “evens the playing field for boys raised by moms.” That wasn’t an assumption. That was reality for most single moms.
Imani S. Latif (islaurora@aol.com) is executive director of a non-profit in Aurora that primarily serves people living with or at risk of acquiring HIV.
