A Talk With Mani About A Black Teen's Survival

WASHINGTON - Impossibly, he became 12 on Saturday. One day soon, we'll have to have The Talk.

Not about sex. Hamani and I have been discussing that for years. The real subject that my son's incipient teens demands is one that I'd rather avoid - like dental appointments or the too-tight skirts in my closet. But there it is.

As the mother of a black son, I haven't the luxury of just getting depressed about what Mani's adolescence suggests about my own age, or about losing him to friends, a woman or a career. I can't just talk about drugs, condoms, or the necessity of keeping his family close, and God closer.

There are other things I must stress.

I think back to when Mani was 4, when I called a Montessori school near our new home in suburban Washington about enrolling him.

The woman who answered was polite in that you're-lucky-I'm-talking-to-you way. But I forged on, finally asking about the school's ethnic makeup. After two years in a terrific Afrocentric preschool, I explained, my son's exposure to a greater mix of kids seemed important. She paused, realizing that I'm black.

"Is your son - nice?" she asked. "We've had problems with a couple of our black boys."

I stammered something about Hamani's sweetness before it hit me. Surely at a school with an over 60 percent white student population, there had been problems with more than a couple of white 4-year-olds - challenging kids come in every shade. But were white parents asked about their son's niceness?

It was paralyzing, facing the first, concrete proof of the prejudice my wonderful child would encounter.

It was nothing compared to what he may deal with in a few years.

Hamani will be a black teenage male. As such, his politeness, numerous "Citizen of the Month" awards from his school, honor-roll grades, perfect diction and extensive knowledge of all things cinematic won't matter a damn. Before he can even get his mouth open, some people will judge him. And he could become a target:

Of merchants who suspect young brothers, however neatly dressed, of shoplifting.

Of police, whom statistics have shown, detain, harass, assault, arrest and "justifiably" kill black males - some culpable, many of them not - far more often than whites. If you doubt this, ask any black man.

Most frighteningly, my son could become a target of other kids - many of them black - who are mesmerized by our culture of toughness. Today, little girls sing along with M.C. Lyte about wanting a guy who's a roughneck, and plenty of boys seem glad to comply. Some will pull a knife or a gun on another teen for an imagined slight. Or for nothing at all.

It's even possible - no one who knows Mani can see it, but there it is - that my son could decide to become such a youth. Either way, there's a clear bottom line:

Black boys are dying, everywhere and every day, in America.

Up to this point - and not entirely to my credit - I've kept my terror over the carnage in check. It's been 15 years since my older brother was shot dead by police, years in which the resulting hole where my stomach should have been has filled. I never want to feel that empty, again. But I'm beginning to think, really think, of what it will mean to let Mani out of my sight.

I mean, someone could take him away.

He doesn't know how often I watch him and his little brother curled in sleep. How I sit, dumbly marveling: Look at how much space he takes up!

I remember my squeal from when he took his first, ducklike steps on a long-ago Valentine's Day. And how two years ago, a stranger who'd sat next to him on his first solo plane trip called me at work to say, "Your son was so smart and so self-possessed - I thought you should know."

Awash in love, bedazzled by it, I think: if people could just know you, they could never hurt you.

But women's children are hurt every day.

I don't like feeling this. I don't like knowing that soon, my son and I will talk, more pointedly than ever, about all of this death. Afterward, I'll ask my husband, a black man who understands too well, to repeat the rules that every kid - but especially a black one - should know:

Never be cocky or make any fast moves with a cop. Never fight if it is possible to walk away. Know that your manhood is defined not by what's in your pants or on your back, but by the responsibility and self-respect in your heart. Watch where you are, and who you're with.

Remember anybody can have a gun.

As the years pass, I will say these things over and over. And every so often, I'll remind him of what the world sometimes suggests that he forget; of what I repeat as I stare at him sleeping:

"You are so precious. You deserve to live. To live."

To live. (Copyright, 1994, Washington Post Writers Group) Donna Britt's column appears Thursday on editorial pages of The Times.