I lied to my son.
As if the election result cementing Donald Trump as our next president again wasn’t enough of a punch to the face, a conversation with my 11-year son on Wednesday was the gut punch that dropped me to the canvas.
After returning home from school, flabbergasted as to how the country could elect a man like Trump president for a second time, my son asked me, “Do you think Donald Trump will try to make us slaves again?”
The velocity at which I attempted to answer his question was somewhere close to the speed of light. Yet before I could even get out my answer, he doubled down. “Are my friends going to be deported?”
I stumbled through my words to assure him that Trump could not make us slaves again.
I also assured him that his friends would not be deported.
In my act of assurance, I lied to my son.
The audacity of me to not at first even give some thought to Trump potentially enslaving Black folks. How could I feign so much certainty given what I’ve seen him do to this country since 2016, even before he became the president?
The audacity of me to assure my son, who, here in Maryland, lives in the second most diverse city in the country, that his friends need not worry. The boldness in me to confidently assure him that in a place as diverse as Montgomery County, Maryland, his friends, classmates, and teammates — all from different walks of life, religions, and countries — would undoubtedly be safe.
I lied to my son. But I had to, didn’t I? I needed to protect the innocence of a sixth grader who plays basketball in his Kenyan friend’s driveway a few times a week. I had to guarantee him that his other friend from Ethiopia, whom he had gone to elementary school with, was going to be OK. Who was I to tell him the truth?
In fact, why couldn’t Donald Trump make us slaves again? He once called for the termination of the Constitution and has recently threatened to eradicate the Department of Education. I never thought he’d be able to empower an angry mob to storm the capitol building, smash windows, climb walls, and look for members of Congress to maul. I never thought a convicted felon, found guilty of sexual abuse, could be elected president. I never thought a man who has verbally assaulted women, Haitians, Africans, Detroiters, and Baltimoreans, just to name a few, could again garner so much support.
Who was I to underestimate what Trump could now do? So I lied to my son. I lied about the safety of his friends. I feigned confidence that everything would be OK. An 11-year-old deserves that lie, don’t they? Why should they walk around in terror, wondering when their friends, their friend’s parents, or their teammates may be whisked away?
My son’s middle school has a 90% minority enrollment. My attempt to shield him from the scars of this country is futile in the grand scheme of things. These kids are approaching adolescence, and they are having conversations at school, on the bus, walking home from school, and wherever else young minds begin to communicate about who their country really is. They have real fears.
So, I lied to my son. Yet, I can’t help but think about whether the lie or truth makes me a more responsible father. When he finds out the truth, will he appreciate my lie, or hold it against me? Would telling him the truth better cement our relationship? Is it better for him to engage with his friends, knowing that some of these relationships could be temporary?
Maybe I should just dive in and let him know that, as Black folks in this country, we may be on an island all by ourselves. Maybe I should tell him that Black people only make up about 14% of the population, and Black folks alone won’t be able to effect major change when it comes to voting. We will need other groups like white men, white women, and Hispanic men to assist us in our quest for a decent, fair, and equitable America.
Maybe I should tell him that with the results of this week’s election, all signs point to Black folks not getting enough support from those groups anytime soon. White men, white Women, and Latino men voted for Trump at 59%, 52%, and 54% clips, respectively. Maybe I should tell him that even immigrants who come to this country eventually want to swim in the pool of anti-Black Americanness.
In the end, I made the right decision by lying to my son. I don’t think there is a need yet to expose my son to the fact that most of the country didn’t vote for Trump strictly due to policy. They voted for Trump to obstruct the browning of a changing America. It’s that simple. My son’s neighborhood friends and their parents represent a threat to Trump’s traditional and outdated ideas of what America is in its purest form.
I lied to my son because I love him. America will tell him the truth eventually because it doesn’t.
John Celestand is the program director of the Knight x LMA BloomLab, a $3.2 million initiative that supports the advancement and sustainability of local Black-owned news publications. He is a former freelance sports broadcaster and writer who covered the NBA and college basketball for multiple networks such as ESPN Regional Television, SNY, and Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia.
