Stop Running

Our family is multicultural, and multiracial. Race and culture are talked about frequently in our home. Often irreverently. We all know that we’re different. We don’t share the same gene pool. We don’t share the same cultural history. Or the same race. We just share the same family.

My husband and I both come from northern European backgrounds.  Primarily Scandinavian.  And I used to say that I didn’t really notice race.  But a few years ago we stopped saying that.  

Our son Mo is African American.  He prefers being called Black.  Mo was 16 or 17 and had been invited to join a travel team from Alaska to play in a basketball tournament in Los Angeles.  Most of the team was from Anchorage, which is roughly 800 miles north of us.  But Mo and a couple of his teammates were invited to join this particular travel team.  

Unbeknownst to us, after the tournament the rest of the team flew out of LA to return to Anchorage.  But Mo and his two teammates from southeast Alaska had to remain in Los Angeles another night, unchaperoned, to catch their flight out of LAX.  Returning through Seattle, and then after a layover, to fly home. To our little community in southeast Alaska.

To say that we were unhappy with this turn of events is an understatement. Three boys from a small town in southeast Alaska left alone in a hotel near LAX overnight, without a chaperone, was not what we had signed on for.  

Mo stayed in contact with us, frequently checking in to let us know what they were doing that evening.  Geoff had encouraged him to order room service for dinner and to hang out around the hotel.  But they were low on money and had decided to go get burgers for dinner.  There was a place they’d seen just a few blocks down the road.

Later that night Mo called Geoff.  Breathless.  

Immediately, I could hear in Geoff’s voice that something was wrong.   I stopped what I was doing to watch and listen. “What’s going on?! What’s wrong?!”

Then Geoff’s response, “Mo!  Stop running! Stop running!  Just stop running!  Right now!  All three of you.  Just stop running!”

The boys, all three of them African American, had walked down a few blocks from their hotel to get burgers.  They’d heard gunshots.  There’d been a shooting.

And instinctively they had taken off running.  As fast as they could.  Fleeing for the safety of their hotel.  

Mo said they could hear sirens.  And that they “just want to get out of here!”  

And Geoff, forever the calm one in our family, had raised his voice. Demanding that Mo and the other two boys “stop running.”  That their lives depended on it.

They made it safely to their hotel.  And the next morning they flew to Seattle, and then back home.  

But for Geoff and me that was the moment we stopped saying that we don’t really notice race.  We noticed race that night.  We noticed, and knew, that the boys’ safety required that they not run.  Even from gunshots.  With sirens all around.  

And the realization hit us.  That had it been our son Ben who called that night we would have told him to get out of there as fast as he could.  To get back to the hotel.  To safety. We would have told Ben to run as fast as he could.  

Our son Ben is white.  

But for our son Mo the rules are different.  And though we hadn’t previously ever really identified that, that particular night we instinctively knew it.  We knew that Mo’s safety required that he stop running.  

Our family is multicultural, and multiracial.  Race and culture are talked about frequently in our home.  Often irreverently.  We all know that we’re all different.  We don’t share the same gene pool.  We don’t share the same cultural history.  Or the same race.  We just share the same family.

And in future generations, I have hope for our family.  For our grandchildren.  And our great-grandchildren.  That they can grow up in a world where the rules are the same. Regardless of their gene pool. Regardless of their cultural history, or their race.  That they all have opportunity to prosper.  And the right to be safe.  

Even if they have to run for it.