When it comes to the stereotypes associated with Black mothers, the list is long. There’s the baby mama, the welfare queen, and if you want to go back even further than that, the mammy. As with all stereotypes, they are one-dimensional and don’t tell the full story of the human experience. While Black mothers contend with centuries worth of misrepresentation, white mothers have not faced the same type of scrutiny, even when some of their parenting choices warrant critique.
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Jameelah Jones pointed out the white privilege at work when it comes to school shootings.
The most recent school shooting in Winder, Georgia, led one content creator to share the privilege white parents and specifically mothers enjoy in society. Jameelah Jones, who goes by Sunny Dae Jones online, began her now-viral video with a question: “White folks, do you notice that no matter how often this happens, nobody’s having national conversations about how you raise your children?”
She then highlighted all of the ways in which Black mothers have been collectively targeted and stigmatized by society at large. “Notice how there’s no 'Stop the violence' commercials on your TV?" she asked. “National news outlets are not going to take footage from the aftermath of the shooting and then put it right beside statistics about absent white fathers in the home,” she said.
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Jones lists the ways Black children are hyper-surveilled.
“Nonprofits aren’t walking into your children’s schools telling them how to 'dress for success' so they don’t pick up guns,” Jones continued. “There are no podcast episodes about how white moms are responsible for all of the ills of their sons.”
Then Jones spoke about the hyper surveillance Black children are under versus the way white children get to live largely unmonitored. “If we go to school with our hair not done for too many days, somebody is in the back corner whispering, ‘Where is that child’s mom?’”
That wasn't the case for Colt Gray, even though there were signs that he was capable of something like this.
Then Jones highlighted the ways Colt Gray, the accused 14-year-old shooter, was able to sneak under the radar. Before the shooting, Gray was chronically absent and the FBI had flagged his internet usage. Still, it didn’t prevent this tragedy.
Jones makes it clear that she’s not on a revenge arc. “I’m not saying this happens to Black moms so it’s gonna happen to everybody else as well,” she explained. “I’m saying white folks should reckon with the fact that’s not happening and ask themselves why, for the better part of 70 years, Black people have been consistently told that our circumstances were because of the environment that we create. Almost all mass shooters, almost all school shooters have been white men and now white boys. And we have not made a national emergency out of how white families raise their kids.”
