COSMOPOLITAN

I’m Moving My Family to Canada to Save My Black Son From America

“George Floyd’s murder was ultimately a reckoning. It was a recognition that I can’t do this. I can’t put my children through this.”

Every parent mourns the loss of innocence for their kid at some point—the first pet that dies or friend who moves away—but as parents of a Black child, my husband and I know that one day, we’ll have to have The Talk. The one we’ve already started with our 3-year-old son Khalil but have yet to finish. The one in which we have to tell him that because he is Black, he is more likely to be harmed by the police, convicted of a crime, and underpaid for his work.

By the time we adopted Khalil, we had already become his parents. (We became his foster parents in 2017 when he was 8 days old, only 12 hours after getting the call about him.) Nearly a year later, as we began the transition to adoptive parents, it was difficult to justify transracial adoption.

The child welfare system in the United States has been and continues to be oppressive to Black families—for example, a Black family under investigation is far more likely to have children removed from their families than a white family. Sitting in family court as foster and then adoptive parents was like sitting *inside* institutional racism—predominantly Black families lined the walls, meeting their attorneys minutes before life-changing hearings, while well-represented white families perched close by, preparing to leave with custody of the Black families’ children. keep reading.....