For Our Boys

In writing this weeks piece I hesitate.
I do so because I know it is still such a sensitive subject to many.
I have decided to do so because this is our outlet, our voice and our right to speak our minds and say whats in our hearts.
Being a Black Latina never hit me so hard as it did today. I honestly do not know how to feel. Part of me wants to cry, and I do.....part of me wants to scream but I also am so confused that part of me doesn't know what emotion to equate with this experience.
I am a Black Latina. It doesn't get any simpler than that. My mother is Black and my father Ecuadorian.

Today I was with my Ecuadorian familiy at a cousins birthday party for her 5 yr old son. I also have a little boy of my own and his father is Dominican. My boy has a very diverse background so you can only imagine his physical appearance. Since he has started to grow hair he has had these two little curls on both sides of his head. They're both very noticable and innocent. Before today I honestly have never took notice of the texture of his curls, he also has some hair on the top of his head that simply lays there. I myself have extremely curly hair, and his father does too. The texture of both of our hair is very different thus resulting in my boys curls, which only time will tell how they will turn out.
So there we are greeting family and enjoying time with my boy as he travels from arm to arm greeting his family. Another cousin of mine then makes a comment about my sons hair. Non chalantly he says "nigger naps".
I simply drift off into space.....into another time..... but where? where did I go? why did I freeze? why did I not interject and react? but if I had what would I have said? what could I have said? and would it have made a difference?
He obviously did not see the wrong in using that word. The way he said it justified the fact that this was not the first time he has used it.
The name continued throughout the 3 hour party, although I kept my distance I tried to make sense of it.
Not even another family member said anything, although his mother did give me permission to " get him", whatever that meant.
That makes me think that maybe they did know that it was not something that should be said.
So now I sit here extremely confused and a little upset at myself.
As I play the moments over and over in my head, I think of the things I could have said, the scene I could have made.
Would anyone have really understood
There would have been no coming back from that.
But then I think of how ignorant and uneducated some people can be, and how insignificant it would be trying to change them.
A waste of breath and waste of energy.
I think of how many young people use that word in slang and loosely.
That hardly ever bothered me.
But this time it hit close to home, maybe because it was unexpected, maybe because it was family, maybe because it was my innocent little boy and the fact that I want to shield him from all the madness and any harm that might ever come his way.
The Black Latina Movement will work toward helping us feel empowered at times like this.