A Black father chose a Black neighborhood to shape his sons’ identity

Evidence

“Growing up, I always lived in a black neighborhood,” he says. “And although my wife is Japanese, and we are a mixed-race family, I wanted our boys to grow up in a black neighborhood because I knew they would come to see themselves as black men. I wanted them to be in the village of black community life, and to understand the cadences and relationships that are built there.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1255

Categorization

• SEED: John’s affirmative choice of Black community complicates the usual narrative that Black neighborhoods were chosen only under constraint — a humanizing angle for writing about why reparations is about honoring agency, not just compensating harm.
• XREF: connects to: Black racial identity is externally imposed before it is self-chosen — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 340; Black American identity fuses external ascription with self-identification — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 341; Racial architecture shapes neighborhoods and the habitus of their residents — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1846 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Black racial identity is externally imposed before it is self-chosen — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 340; Black American identity fuses external ascription with self-identification — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 341; Racial architecture shapes neighborhoods and the habitus of their residents — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1846 (+3 more)