I try to be as encouraging as I can when it comes to things I talk to my children about. This is Black History Month so I thought it would be a good idea to watch some black historical shows with the girls. I found this one series on HULU called “The Book Of Negroes” I thought it sounded like a good show. After minutes went by, the girls started to get up and walk out of the room. I looked around and noticed they had an uncomfortable twitch going, so, I paused the movie.

That’s when it happened. I was bombarded with questions as to why was I watching this type of show? It’s Black History Month so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about our roots, but I should have known better. Every Black History Month we run into this same issue. I find a good movie or show to view and the children protest. So this time around they asked me something that I haven’t heard before. They insisted that watching the show made them feel sad and then they asked me, why didn’t it make me sad? I told them that it reminded me that we are here for a reason and that our people made big sacrifices so that we would be able to live in the house we live in, eat the foods we eat, walk down the streets we walk down, and sleep in late on Saturdays, if we wanted to.

They countered with, doesn’t it make you dislike white people? I answered no more than I would dislike the ones who sold our ancestors into slavery. They nodded and continued out of the room. I don’t know if they will ever be ready to learn about our history, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop trying to give little history lessons when I can. However, I can’t lie, there’s part of me starting to wonder if we maybe focus a little too much on the history and not enough on the future.