What a Black Father Tells His Son After Trump’s Win

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,...