when i was 13 we went on vacation to this cheap beach town where a lot of college students like to go. one night we were eating dinner at a mexican restaurant and i left the table to go wash my hands. i was confused when i saw the bathrooms because i didn’t know which one was for women. while i stood there (and again, remember, i was a short, skinny 13 year old indian girl with an anjali-esque bob cut, wearing a large purple sweat shirt i got from my best friend’s bat mitzvah - i looked very much like a teenage girl) a white man with a bunch of piercings, who was clearly an adult, probably a college student or older, came up to me and said “do you want to go into the bathroom with me?” with a smirk on his face. iMMEDIATELY, it seems like out of nowhere, my mom popped up next to me and said “what the hell did you just ask her?” and the guy backed off.
two summers ago, when an old, tall, skinny white man (old but not so old that he’s frail) yelled at my brother in the security line before our flight and forcefully shoved him (my brother was 15 at the time, a 5′6′’ brown boy, shorter and much younger than this man) because he assumed my brother was “cutting in front of him”, my mother immediately stood in front of my brother and screamed at the man, asking him “how dare you lay your hands on my son”, forcing him to apologize and keep his mouth shut for the rest of the line.
my mother is a 5′2′’ beautiful bengali woman, shorter and physically weaker than most violent and predatory white men, but she’s always protected me and my brother and she’s never been afraid to appear like a hysterical wailing woman when she does.
so i always laugh when i see white freaks who think they can be better parents to children of color than moms of color, when i see white people, INCLUDING white gays and white women, underestimate the love of a brown mother and how our mothers are willing to kill for us if necessary.