Not the Day or Conversation any parent wants to have

As a parent, you kinda know there are gonna be some days and conversations that you will have to have whether you want to or not.  The birds and bees talk, the first time your child gets there heart broke, a college rejection letter. You know these are coming, and a good parent doesn't get caught off guard by these more than once. Today, I have to have one of those days that as a parent, I knew was coming, but I really wish I didn't have to.

My oldest son is 22. (He is my ex wife's son, but I raised him so...). Yesterday at his job, two police officers entered his place of employment and talked to him and his boss. He owns an umbrella that kinda looks like a samurai sword. The police had stopped him a week before to question him about it.  Now they were at his job.  

My son is not a thug.  He is an artist.  The kinda kid who is more prone to change his hair color than sag his pants.  But he is black...and he lives in the suburbs...and he is now being profiled and it sucks. So I have to tell him today that he has to be careful.  He has to watch what he does. He has to understand that everything he does will be looked at through little black boy glasses. And he has to find a way to rise above all of that. 

In this country, where everybody was soooo sad about losing Nelson Mandela, I have to explain to my 22 year old son something that I unfortunately have been socialized to know.  Son, you will be followed in stores, you will be pulled over when you drive, you will be profiled, people will think you are a rapper when you really enjoy EMO, women will grab there purses and cross the street when you walk by, and yes the police will think it's ok to come to your job and harass you.  

I hate that I have accepted this truth, and hate more that I have to have this talk with my son.  Not a day that wanted to come, but a day I knew was coming.