Content note: this short article contains sources to rape.
He is standing in front of a blonde girl when I pick my son up at the library. I hear them talking, laughing, flirting in that awkward early-teen way as I move closer. I stop, get my son’s eye, and present them their room. She plainly likes my son, and he can be seen by me basking when you look at the attention.
We acknowledge for some motherly pride that somebody besides their grandmothers and me personally acknowledges his attractiveness. But, during the time that is same we begin to view the doorway. I’m unexpectedly anxious.
“Why?” We ask myself.
We realize I’m interested in the girl’s moms and dads. My son is certainly not white. The old idea that men of color are sexually dangerous continues to circulate from Donald Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants being “drug dealers” and “rapists” to Dylann Roof’s comments about Black men raping white women. And I realize it’s not just white supremacists who help keep this idea in circulation as I watch my son with a pretty white girl.
I recall a time once I effortlessly dropped for the tale that Latino males liked women that are big. For a fat woman anything like me, it absolutely was a comforting story. But as other white ladies shared these stories beside me, we started to get itchy. There clearly was one thing into the narrative that kept bothering me personally. A thing that whispered, “This is dangerous.”
Yes, my partner features a leaning towards fat girls I realize now, is clearly wrong like me, but to suggest that everyone in an entire ethnic group has the same preference.
Whenever my son underwent their teenage sexual awakening, we started initially to spend a lot more focus on these tales from my past. Read More
