If you are a minority living in a majority white culture, as parents there are conversations you will likely have with your children that would be less typical in a majority white home.
Here's Jasmine Holmes. How do you act? How do you respond? You're a black woman and so you have to keep that in mind at all times. That's something that my parents instilled in me. It's something that I walk a fine line with for my son.
I want him to be aware of his skin and I want him to act with awareness, but I also want him to be able to be a kid. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. It's good for all of us to be aware of some of the unique challenges facing minority families in a majority white culture.
We're going to hear more about that today from Jasmine Holmes. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. I want to know if your wife was a, was she a mama bear? Would you have used that expression about her when you were raising your boys?
I think every mom's a mama bear at some point. Yeah. Yeah.
And she was at some things, but not other things. But yeah, there's some, there's some stories. There's a fierceness there.
Oh, yeah. Do you remember when your mama bear instincts came out as you were raising your sons? Was there anything that happened that caused you to just say over my dead body kind of stuff?
I feel like it's more as they got older with coaches. Dave's pretty laid back and I'm pretty intense and I can like let her blow in the house. But then I would have to, every time I'd have to go before God, like, Lord, here's what I'm going to say. And then he would always temper it, like, all right, let's just calm it down. Because when I'm at my peak, it's just like everybody look out, here she comes.
And Dave would just be praying in the other room, probably, Jesus, help her to calm down a little bit. Well, we have got a mama bear. Is it fair to call you a mama bear? Is that all right?
Yes, definitely. Jasmine Holmes is joining us on Family Life Today. Jasmine, welcome back.
Thank you for having me back. Jasmine has written a book called Mother to Son, which is a collection of letters you wrote to your then three-year-old son, Wynn. You're now a mother of two. Langston was born right after you had submitted this to your publisher. And this was a collection of letters about what you wanted, how you wanted to be guiding your boys as they grew. Some of it related to the fact that you're living as minority people in a majority white culture, but that's really not all that you were writing about. You were writing about what their identity would be beyond their racial or their ethnic makeup, right?
Absolutely, yes. So as you think about the non-ethnic themes in this book, what was most important to you as a mom that you wanted to make sure you were communicating and guiding your son with? When we talk about ethnicity, it's really easy to talk about it as though it's the most important thing, especially right now in our culture. And I think that there's a ditch on both sides of the road. There's a ditch on one side that says it doesn't matter what color you are, we're colorblind, your heritage doesn't matter, we're just all people, nothing else is important. And then there's a ditch on the other side that says that your heritage and ethnicity is the most important thing.
It's all that matters and you should be judged solely based on the level of melanin in your skin. And so my goal for the book was, even though it is a book about ethnic identity, I wanted to remind my son that the most important part of his identity is in the fact that he's made in the image of God. And I hope that the older that he gets, the most important part of his identity becomes his identity in Christ. And there are character qualities that all of us want for our kids as they grow up. I'm just wondering, I kind of have a sense of what those character qualities were for my kids. Like I wanted to make sure that my boys were hard workers, that they would take responsibility, not be passive. Truth tellers.
Yeah. I'm just wondering, in a minority environment, are there other qualities that stand out that you say we just have to emphasize other things because of the unique nature of being minority or not? I think overall there are similar emphasis, there's a similar emphasis on all kinds of things, right?
The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. I do think as a black mother, sometimes I major a little bit more on certain things because of the color of my son's skin. So when it comes to teaching him, for instance, how to regulate his emotions, how to be a self-controlled and patient young man. Well, part of that's because he's a boy, right? And we know that young men are specifically told to work on self-control. That is something that as a male, it's really important for him to have down pat.
Doesn't mean if I had a daughter, it wouldn't be important for her. It's just something that I'm really emphasizing with him because he is a boy. In a similar way, because he's a young black man, I emphasize it even extra, even more so. Me and my brother, when we were learning how to drive, more so my brother than me, lots of black children have that conversation of if the police pulls you over, what do you do? How do you act? How do you respond? For me, it was if there's a customer service issue when you're out, how do you act?
How do you respond? You're a black woman and so you have to keep that in mind at all times. That's something that my parents instilled in me. It's something that I walk a fine line with for my son. I want him to be aware of his skin and I want him to act with awareness. But I also want him to be able to be a kid.
Right. And even though he is a little black boy, he's still a boy with thoughts and feelings and emotions. And I don't think that it's fair that he should have to work extra hard just because of the color of his skin. And that balancing act kind of starts with me.
So I'm still figuring that out for him. I want him to be exemplary because he's a young man who's being raised by people who love Jesus and not have to feel like he has to be exemplary just because he's sometimes going to be the only black boy in the room. Hey, talk about, because I found it in your second chapter where you're talking about the identity that you are gods. And then you list three things you want your son to know. And again, even as I read the book, I thought, man, every mother and father needs to read this book, every son and daughter. Because it speaks to every son and daughter, not just yours, which is a beautiful thing. You wrote it for your son, but we all get to benefit from it. What you say about identity, three things you are made in his image.
And I'm thinking I will tell my son that and I have told my son that you are his beloved son. But the second one is you are black on purpose. And I'm like, whoa, that's unique because that is so important to understand that for a little black boy, I never thought of telling my white son you are white on purpose.
That wasn't something that came to my mind, but it's distinctive. So talk about that so we can understand that. I think again, and I kind of talked about this last time, a lot of me talking to my son is talking to younger me, things that I wanted to hear, things my parents told me, things that were true of me, even though I didn't always feel them. And so often being the only black girl in the room was hard. And it was really easy for me to be like, well, why me? Like, how come I have to do this?
How come I have to be different? And really changing my mindset of the fact that God was purposeful in his making of me, just like he was purposeful in his making of my friends, just like he was purposeful in putting me in whatever surroundings that I was in. And really understanding that when God created Adam and Eve, he made them so that in their genetic makeup, they had all of the genetic material necessary to give birth to every single ethnicity that has ever existed. Which is like, it's mind blowing, it's mind boggling to me, but like from the beginning when he said, I made you two and this is good, all of that potential inside of them to make all these different kinds of people was good. And reminding myself of that has been so important. And I really want my son to understand that as well, to see, you know, not you're black and it's better, it's not better, but it's good. Talk about the goodness, because I think there are some folks who, again, would look at our cultural situation and go, how can you call this good that you're minority living in a majority culture and that means oppression?
There's nothing good about that. My second born son, his name is Langston. He is named after my favorite poet, Langston Hughes.
And his first name is Ezra. He's named after Ezra Jack Keats, who wrote The Snowy Day and Langston Hughes. And two writers, two very different writers who lived during very different times. I have always loved that my history includes Langston Hughes, I think that he's brilliant. And every single time that I read one of his poems, I just walk away, especially his poems that have to do with heritage and hope, I just walk away and I'm just like, oh, just the way that he describes our heritage is so beautiful. And Langston is one of those writers who just puts me in a mindset of being grateful for how far we have come in this country and how many blessings the Lord has given us. When I look back at the founding of this country, when I look back at the devastation of the slave trade, when I look back at Jim Crow law in the south, there has been so much overcoming and so much beauty and so much purpose and so much potential wrapped up in brown skin in America.
And against all odds, being able to give birth to a beautiful and vibrant culture that's full of expressions of God's faithfulness is a gift. I think it also helps to remember that our view of history is short. I teach at a classical Christian school, and I had a parent once asked me, I teach medieval history, a lot of the time. And so a parent asked me, is it ever hard to teach medieval history because you don't really get to teach a lot about black people and you really teach about white people conquering and taking over and all this stuff. And I was like, no, I teach about one part of history and history is really long.
And there was a time when your ancestors were painting themselves blue and attacking neighboring tribes and my ancestors were coming up with the first bronze weapons. We all, we go through our phases, we all have our times, we all have our moments. And so I think having that longer view of history does help because, of course, if we're only looking at this small little window of history, it's really easy to lose hope. But looking at the huge picture and looking at the diverse picture of what it does mean to be a black American and to look back at our history, I think you can't help but see how beautiful it is. Jasmine, is there ever a part of you as a mom raising black sons, are you afraid for them?
Sometimes, sometimes I am. I think my more immediate fear for my sons, rather than being afraid for them bodily, my more immediate fear is for their souls. I am so afraid of raising young men who are jaded by the state of things in the world right now. I am so committed to raising boys who know how to hope boys who are optimists, in spite of knowledge that might prove to the contrary, boys who are centered on the gospel in Christ.
That doesn't mean that I never see these hashtags and headlines and never put myself in these mothers' positions, but I think my more immediate fear is for their souls. And how do you keep them from being jaded? I have such a good community here in Jackson.
I realize that not everybody has that. I have just been able to surround our little family with people who understand the gospel, who understand the beauty that God created in diversity, who love us and who love us well. And I think that surrounding my boys with this community is a huge step in showing them that the world has more to offer than what we see on headlines, because it can be so easy to get wrapped up in Twitter debates and wrapped up in Facebook comment threads and wrapped up in hashtags and wrapped up in media.
But when it comes down to the actual day-to-day of living in community with brothers and sisters in Christ and learning how to love them well, I do find more reasons for optimism than I might find looking at a headline. You know, I found an interesting quote in your book about fear, a mother's fear, I thought was so insightful. I'll read it to you, and I'd love to have you comment, because I don't know how long ago you wrote this. I'm sure you'll remember it, but you said, Make no mistake, I will train you as I was trained to respond to authority in a way that will make you appear as non-threatening and compliant as humanly possible, and I will hope and pray that this compliance will serve as some kind of barrier against brutality that your young black form may incur. What I fear most is the way that the politicizing of that violence and of the black bodies it sometimes harms will impact your mind. Will you become desensitized by the death of black men, shrugging off injustice because it makes you uncomfortable? Will you become paralyzed by the death of black men, locked in an endless downward spiral of fear and grief?
I hope not. I mean, that is a fear that you articulated that I'm sure many moms relate to and many don't. So talk about that. That's a unique fear. Yeah, there's a lot of conversation every time that a death happens to a black man at the hands of law enforcement.
There is a lot of kickback about it, a lot of kick up about it, justified. But I do think that when these things happen, we have a tendency to dehumanize the people who are the victims of these deaths. And we no longer see Ahmaud Arbery, the man.
We no longer see George Floyd, the man. We see the hashtags that either support or don't support our preconceived political ideals of why they got shot, what the police should be doing, what they should not be doing. Things just go from being human, go from us mourning a death, mourning a loss and seeing a person who is made in the image of God in the face of the fallen and in the face of law enforcement and instead seeing different political ideologies on whatever side. If I'm on one side, then I am seeing it as mounting evidence against the systemic racism and brutality in our country. If I'm on another side, I'm seeing it as mounting evidence that, for instance, you know, George Floyd, I'm going to I'm going to pick apart his past so that I can make sure that everybody knows that, OK, yes, he did get killed by law enforcement, but he wasn't a good person.
So he shouldn't be a hero or OK yet. And so it starts to devolve into just this kind of political chess game and moves away from being a conversation about a human being who is made in the image of God. I want my sons to stand outside of that political chess game and to truly see people and see their worth outside of the back and forth that so often happens around these deaths. And it's hard.
It's hard. I mean, I even I had a friend who on Facebook was like, hey, everybody who's passing around this video of George Floyd dying, you're posting a video of a man's soul leaving his body. You haven't asked his family if it's OK for you to post that video. You haven't thought about what his family might be seeing, thinking of this video.
You're just posting this video trying to prove a point. But like this person has died and we watched it happen and it impacted me because even though I hadn't shared the video, I hadn't had that thought when I was seeing it. I had thought, oh, this is really sad, but I hadn't seen myself as the spectator that I was being. And I want my sons to be like that friend and to see an image bearer, not just a political moment. Yeah, I'm thinking about the inspiring, famous quote from Dr. King who said that he dreamed of a day when people would be known by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That quote is being kind of reconsidered in our day.
Deconstruct that for me. And as you raise your son, is that a value that you would teach your son or is there another side to that we need to be considering? I think that Dr. King often gets quoted out of context. People love his I Have a Dream speech, but they don't really talk much about his letter from a Birmingham jail and his super strong words against white moderates.
Words that are actually being kind of acted out a lot by some people right now. So, I do feel like that quote in and of itself can't offer a complete view of even Dr. King's thoughts on the issue. Because he was a complex man who had a whole body of work that oftentimes gets ignored in the quest for kind of upholding certain quotes of his. However, I want my son to be judged by the content of Christ's character because I want him to be a person who has been bought with a price. I want him to be a person who walks in an identity that is in Christ above all else. And I think I've said it already, one of the ingredients of that identity is that he's a black man.
I think that's beautiful, wonderful. One of the ingredients in identity is that he is a man. I don't think anybody would be like, you know, when like, I know that you're a man, but I just want to ignore that. And I want to just treat you like you don't have any gender or sexuality at all.
That's silly. He's a man. Well, I think it's equally silly to say, well, when, you know, I want to I just want to overlook. I know that you're talking about your unique struggles or unique triumphs as a black man, but I just want to overlook that. I think that looking at that is part of looking at the whole picture and part of looking at the whole man and appreciating him.
So seeing his ethnicity as a beautiful part of him, not something that needs to be ignored, but also not something that needs to be preeminent. It was fun this morning, Jasmine, I was on Instagram and I just happened to be scrolling through. And one of my good friend's daughters had posted a cover of your book. And she said, every mom needs to read this.
This is amazing. And so I text her. She's a white mom that has adopted a black son.
He's five years old. And so she's really trying to learn. And so I text her and I said, hey, we're going to be interviewing Jasmine today. If you sat down with her across the table, what would you want to ask her? And she was like, this is amazing. I'm so excited for you. I love her.
I love her book. And so instantly I get like five questions from her that she's like, this is what I would want to hear from her. One of the questions was, you're a teacher and you're a mom. How are you practicing racial reconciliation in your church, in your school and in your neighborhood?
What does that look like, practically speaking? A lot of times for me, it takes place in school. I'm the only black teacher at my school and I've been there. This will be my fourth year teaching there and I've never had a black student there at the school.
They just haven't been in my class yet. And I teach most of the time I teach medieval history, but my first year teaching there and now this year teaching there, I will be teaching American history. And every year that I teach American history, we do a whole unit on the civil rights movement in Mississippi. And I am one of those people who can fall into the trap of thinking that the answer to everything is more education, because I'm a teacher and that's what we do. But one of the major ways that I practice racial reconciliation is through education and through teaching these kids in Mississippi about their history, not in a way that shames them or makes them feel bad for being white Mississippi kids, but in a way that makes them aware of the history of this state and ways that things can change and things can be better.
And it's such an interesting experience. I'm from Texas. I thought that I was from the south before I moved to Mississippi and then I realized that I am not from the south. And Mississippi is just a place where history is always closer to us here than it is anywhere else. And so there's a power in teaching history that I really enjoy. So that's the major way. And then, like I said, I go to a church.
I think we were talking about this earlier. That's very ethnically and politically and economically diverse. And they just try really hard to just reach across there in a predominantly black lower class neighborhood. And they at my church's school is specifically geared towards kids in that neighborhood where the church is, which is great. So they have what they call their covenant kids in the church and then they have the community kids in the neighborhood. And so they're all going to school together, learning together, learning alongside each other.
And I'm super excited for my son to be part of that. So those of us who are not history teachers and who don't have that same approach, how can we be practicing majority culture families? What can we be doing to help encourage racial reconciliation as we raise our kids? Relationships are so important. I have living in Mississippi and part of it is just, you know, being a pastor's kid. There are certain boundaries to relationships that I have not experienced as an adult. So it's been really cool to be an adult and not be like the pastor's daughter or the pastor's wife and to just get to have these really deep relationships with people. But I have so enjoyed friendships with people in our community, at our church. The cool thing, again, about living in Jackson, Mississippi, is that I know like 10 of the people in my neighborhood also go to my church. And so people in my neighborhood and people in my church are like the same people. And we've had we've done all kinds of things.
I mean, even from just having really difficult conversations that are uncomfortable sometimes to checking in on each other when things are happening in the world. Like things that have happened over the last few months. I have a book club. I do like book club things where we read things that are, you know, that bring up these issues. But I think everybody just kind of finds their own way to engage in these issues.
So maybe people who are more politically involved, like my husband is more politically involved than I am. He's part of an organization that focuses on school choice and ending mass incarceration. And that's his area. That's his focus. He's not a teacher. But he is going to go to these board meetings and talk about school choice and how education is impacting the black community. And so that's just an example of how the two of us are really different and we kind of interact with these things in different ways. Speaking of your husband, from a mom's perspective, how important do you see the role of a dad with a son and identity and hope?
It's so important. My husband was not blessed to have a dad who was actively involved in his life. And one of the most beautiful and redemptive things about being a parent for me has been to be able to see him be the kind of father to his sons that he was not blessed to have himself. He delights in his sons and they know that. My son, Wynn, he does this thing where he, I mean, it's mocking us, basically. So he'll be like, I'm mama. And he'll go, good night, Wynn.
I'll be right back. I love you. And I say, you know, OK, what does Dada say? And he thought about it. And then he goes, Dada says, Wynn, I love you so much.
I'm so proud of you. And I was like, is that what Dada says to you all the time? And he kind of rolls his eyes. He's like, he tells me all the time. You don't understand what an important, like, huge deal that is.
But someday you will. I think, too, for me, as I watched our sons growing up, I was amazed at the power that a dad carries. I realized that they were around me more than Dave, but they were always watching Dave. They always watched what he did. I was with one of the boys one time in the car, and he was spitting out the window.
I'm like, who taught you to spit out the window? He goes, oh, Dad does it all the time. You know, they're with me, but they're really watching a dad, and that role of a dad has so much power.
Yes, yes. Well, Jasmine, this book and your writing is so helpful for every mother, I think for every father, for every Christian, to understand the context, to understand the uniquenesses that you're facing, to help us all. At one level, we are all together in the process of partnering and raising your son, because we're part of a covenant community, and we need to understand that responsibility better, and you've helped us do that with the book. Thanks for this time, and thanks for your writing. And I think we should close. Why don't you pray for Wynn and Langston?
Would you do that? I would love to. Father, thank you, first of all, for Jasmine and for the passion that you've given her, for her sons to know you and their identity in you, Lord. And so, Lord, I pray that that would sink deep into their souls of who they are as men of God, of who you call them. I pray that you would form them and that you would take their character and mold it into your hands so that they reflect you, Lord.
I think that's what we all want as mothers and fathers, that we would reflect you and our kids would reflect you to impact their community and generation for your kingdom, Jesus. So, I pray for protection for these boys. I pray for power over them. And I pray for Jasmine and Phillip as they raise them. And not only them, Lord, but for our other brothers and sisters that are listening, that you would anoint us and give us wisdom, Lord, that we need to raise these kids in an era and in a time that they would stand up and proclaim your name in power and in reverence of who you are because, Lord, you are the reconciler.
You are the one that has adopted all of us into your kingdom. And, Lord, I pray that you would fight on our behalf to bring peace and to give us wisdom to know when to stand up and to shout and when to sit down and just pray. And, Lord, we need you and I thank you for all you're doing. And I pray that you would give Jasmine more dreams of how she can use your gifts to encourage us and to prompt us to be closer to you.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Jasmine, thank you. Thanks for the time.
Thank you for having me. And thanks for the book, too. Thanks for writing Mother to Son, Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope.
I hope this will be widely read, not just by other black moms, but by all of us to better understand the challenges that minority families are facing in a predominantly white culture. Go to familylifetoday.com to get a copy of Jasmine's book, Mother to Son. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get your copy of Jasmine's book.
Again, it's titled Mother to Son. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now, we've had a whole bunch of you over the last several days who have gone to your app store for your device and downloaded the brand new updated, upgraded Family Life app.
You can type Family Life as one word in the search bar in your app store, and the new app pops up there. David Robbins, the president of Family Life, is here with us. And David, this new upgraded app gives us a fresh opportunity to connect with our listeners.
Yeah, Bob, we are really excited about this because we know in a unique season like 2020, our rhythms are all over the place. And when people need help, they need help at that moment. When people need hope, they need access to it right then.
We want to be a source to provide encouragement and biblical help and hope when you need it. And that's why our team has really invested time in making this app. My new habit has been coming home from taking the kids to school. It doesn't line up to when Family Life Today is on in my city. So I open up that app and it has been such a refreshing thing and the timing is perfect. I pull back in my driveway before I go jump on a bunch of Zoom calls and I listen to that day's show.
And I find myself praying specific prayers for my kids as they're at school and as I walk back into my house. And we're hopeful that this app allows people to access biblical truth whenever they need it. And I'm so grateful for our financial partners at Family Life who make it possible for our teams to continue to innovate and to launch this vastly improved and relaunched app.
Well, and again, it's easy and it's free to download. Go to your app store for your device, type in Family Life as one word and download the new Family Life app. Thank you, David. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow. We're going to hear a conversation that our friend Kim Anthony had recently for her podcast Unfavorable Odds. She talked with John Perkins.
I think he's 90 years old now. John has been a leader among evangelicals in the Deep South talking about racial issues for years. And Kim had a conversation with him recently. We'll hear that when we come back tomorrow. Hope you can join us. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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