‘Let’s Just Make It Home.’ The Unwritten Rules Blacks Learn To Navigate Racism in America

Speak in short sentences. Be clear. Direct but not rude. Stay calm, even if you’re shaking inside. Never put your hands in your pockets. Make sure people can always see your hands. Try not to hunch your shoulders. Listen to their directions. Darnell Hill, a pastor and a mental health caseworker, offers Black teenagers these emotional and physical coping strategies every time a Black person is fatally shot by a police officer. That’s when parents’ worries about their sons and daughters intensify. “They’re hurting,” Hill says. “They’re looking for answers.” Hill, who is African American, learned “the rules” the hard way. When he was 12, he and a group of friends jumped a fence to go for a swim in a lake. That’s when two police officers approached them. One of the cops, a white man, threatened to shoot Hill and everyone else if he ever caught them there again. “I was so afraid,” Hill, now 37, recalls. “He made all of us sit down in a line right by the lake.” He still tells himself that the officer didn’t mean what he said that day. But Hill’s tone changes when he thinks about the second time white men threatened him with a gun. Hill and his family moved to a small, mostly white town in Florida. He rarely left the house at night, but one day when he was a sophomore in high school, his grandmother, who wasn’t feeling well, asked him to take their car and drive to a co...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news