This. Is. A. Motherhood. Issue.

This is beautiful, beautiful, heartbreaking writing from the Black Snob on Trayvon Martin .. as it should be:

Take this burden and just accept it as your burden. It’s just “how it is.” You’re all statistics. Take these statistics. And black people get shot everywhere everyday by everyone. Police. Non-police. Crazy people. Bigots. Their parents. Other kids. Just take it. It’s part of your Life In America, Black People. Accept this tragedy and go through the motions of appealing to people’s decency and demanding justice and having protests and press conferences and crying and asking why and demanding answers and then eventually getting that bad dead cold thing that just sits there and says, “Take this.”

Here’s your load. Pick it up.

Pass it along to the children, so they can carry a bit of it too. Let it weigh down on their worlds. Let it rob them of their childhood and innocence. Tell them to take it, so they grow up faster and accept the unfairness in life and just give up. Be cynical and fatalistic. Be cold when it happens to the next person. Or be cold themselves when they do it to another person. And as they rob that person of what was once robbed of themselves and that person asks them why or looks for recourse or retribution or answers, they can stare back unblinking in the shadow of our common oppressors and say, “Take this load and pick it up.”

But I’m sorry. I’m not going to pick up this shit anymore. It’s not mine.

I cannot emphasize enough (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) that the justice system – prisons, policing, law-making.. these are motherhood issues, they are primary components of mothering for some of us and the motherhood movement must ensure that it/us takes up these issues and incorporates them as a key part of our conversation, a key part of our concerns, a key part of our activism, and a key part of our political voice.