‘I Have a Black Son in Baltimore’: Anxious New Parents and an Era of UneasePosted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States on 2016-08-24 14:13Z by Steven |
‘I Have a Black Son in Baltimore’: Anxious New Parents and an Era of Unease
The New York Times
2016-08-23
 Bill Janu, a Baltimore police detective, greeted Shanna Janu, his wife, and their son, Wesley, as he arrived home from work one day this month. Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times |
BALTIMORE — He assembled the crib and mounted the bookshelves. She unpacked the bedding and filled the closet with onesies and rompers. Then husband and wife stood in the nursery and worried. Bill Janu, a police officer, is white. Shanna Janu, a lawyer, is black. As they eagerly awaited their baby’s birth this spring, they felt increasingly anxious.
They had chosen not to find out their baby’s gender ahead of time. But their nearly two years of marriage had been punctuated by the killings of African-American men and boys in Ferguson, Mo.; Brooklyn; Cleveland; North Charleston, S.C.; and Baltimore, all at the hands of the police. Mr. Janu, who longed for a son, tried to reassure his wife. Mrs. Janu emailed him one article after another, warning of the perils that face black boys.
As the due date approached, Mr. Janu found himself praying for a girl.
In the delivery room at St. Agnes Hospital, after more than 20 hours of labor, the infant finally arrived, red-faced and wailing. The newborn had Mr. Janu’s blue eyes and Mrs. Janu’s full lips and nose. The new father exulted. Then he felt the weight of his new reality.
“Now, I have a black son in Baltimore,” the white police detective remembered thinking as he cradled his baby boy…
Read the entire article here.