The Mother of The Black Male

16, 18 and 21 for the Mother of the Black Male these are not the ages of time honored rites of passage. For her, these are time markers that the probability of her Black male child being racially profiled, targeted and destroyed. 16...marks the age that her Black male child becomes mobile and thus he may be found in neighborhoods that view him as  a threat. 18...denotes the historical age of the right to participate in the Democratic process of voting. But for the Mother of a Black male, it signals the great possibility of her child being stopped, forced to be searched, stripped of his dignity by being made to sit on the curb with feet in the gutter. The unspoken belief that the gutter is where he belongs. 21...announces proudly that the entire world is available. But for the Mother of a  Black male child this age marks when her child is no longer under her protection. It often brings the harbinger of of either harsh imprisonment or death. For the Mother of a Black male child there is no age that she will be able to exhale. There will NEVER be an age that this Mother can relax. No matter where he may be found in this world, his life is never safe from the worry of the Mother of a Black male child.