Living Abroad Is My Way of Prolonging My Black Son’s Life

He is not a threat. He is a loving, innocent child. I can’t bear him becoming another hashtag.

Upon hearing the news of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, I was devastated. Although I couldn’t bring myself to watch the video of his death, my anxiety went through the roof because I had seen this many, many times before.

It was Sandra Bland’s death in police custody in 2015 that made me buy a one-way ticket out of the United States. I had never lived abroad before, but I was willing to try anything to escape becoming another hashtag.

Now I have a 3-year-old son to protect from violence. On Wednesday, I found myself spending the entire day with him. I work full time, so I haven’t been able to truly devote myself to one-on-one activities during the pandemic. It was such an emotional day for me, as a mother, and I just wanted to be close to him, hug him, kiss him and hear his cartoonish little laugh.

In the last three months, I have been in four countries and five states — including Wuhan, China, which had been our home for more than a year before the pandemic began. After leaving China, my family and I spent a lot of time trying to get our lives back to normal, which included stops in Malaysia and the Czech Republic, and also involved a three-week separation from my husband and child, because of border closings in Europe.

Thankfully we are now together and staying in an Airbnb in Florida. We’re waiting for international borders to open, because we don’t actually have a residence in the United States anymore, and for good reason.

I moved to Cairo in August of 2015 from Washington, D.C. By March of the next year I would meet my husband there. He coaches American-style football internationally, and before we met, he had lived in four countries outside of the United States.

My husband is a black American and was born and raised on the East Side of Buffalo, N.Y. Buffalo is a city that many people positively associate with their favorite chicken wings, but it’s also a place where my husband lost more than 30 friends to death before he turned 25. When my husband was still living there, black people accounted for 14 percent of the overall population, but 43 percent of arrests. This is a reality black boys and men continue to face across the country.

When my husband and I decided to get married, we didn’t have those clichéd conversations about the house and white picket fence we hoped to have, and we didn’t talk about who would spend what holiday with which side of the family next year.

For my husband and me, the conversation was: Where could we safely raise a family? Where could we feel like we didn’t have a constant threat or target on our backs? And although we weren’t quite sure, we knew that going back to the United States was out of the question.

I gave birth to our son, Nasir, in February of 2017. He was born in Szczecin, Poland, where my husband had taken a contract just weeks before my due date. I refused to attempt giving birth in the States because black women are three to four times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum than their white counterparts. Black babies have an infant mortality rate that is higher than babies of any other race. I simply wanted us to stay alive, and I could not trust that to be the end result if I stayed in America.

By the time Nasir turned 2, we left Poland and returned to Egypt. Then we moved on to China. We traveled all over for pleasure. People took a liking to Nasir, no matter where we went in the world. Strangers would hand him money or sweets, and sometimes people would just want to give him a high five, a hug or a kiss.

“He’s such a good boy,” remarked a team of flight attendants on a trip we took to Greece. They were so enamored with him and handed me some European chocolate that was as big as he was.

As much as I reveled in their kindness, I began to think, “When does this change?” I knew that although Nasir was adorable to people now, at some point he could be Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. So, I decided to ask a friend who has four sons of different ages, hoping that maybe I was just paranoid.

“Do people look at your sons differently, when they hit a certain age? And at what age is that? I feel like people are so in love with Nasir right now, but I fear that this is going to change,” I said to her.

Before she even responded, I felt a lurch in the pit of my stomach. It was an intuitive panic that screamed, “Get ready!”

She told me that it changes around 10. That’s when you start to experience teachers claiming your child has behavioral problems, and when women start clutching their purses or walking briskly past to avoid contact with your precious boy.

In the United States, black children face harsher punishments and more frequent disciplinary actions against them than any other race in a school setting. Black children are 18 times more likely to be tried as an adult than white children are for similar crimes. And according to the American Psychology Association, black boys as young as 10 are viewed as older and less innocent than white boys — exactly as my friend experienced with her sons.

Nasir is 3. He loves cars, trucks and “Paw Patrol.” His favorite snacks are cashews and fruit snacks. He likes to say that he’s a “big boy” and wants to do so many things by himself. I have watched him grow inside of my body and now as he’s become an effervescent toddler. So, as a mother I have to protect that innocence by prolonging his life as much as I can.

Does racism exist everywhere? The short answer is yes, but our quality of life is much different as black Americans who choose to live outside of the United States. The angst of worrying about bills and debt takes a backseat to being able to fully enjoy where we live.

In our experience, police in other parts of the world are much kinder and don’t interact with us too much outside of simply offering greetings. Most countries that we have lived in have much stricter gun laws than the United States does, and they certainly don’t allow vigilantes to use a weapon on someone’s child without severe punishment. Nasir gets to be a 3-year-old who has tantrums as equally as he offers hugs and kisses. He can play with a toy gun without the threat that he will be returned real gunfire and lose his life.

One day I will see him graduate and get married and become a man who has purpose, goals and problems just like anyone else. But I cannot do that in America, because I need that day to become a reality, and not just a dream that gets destroyed.

Imani Bashir is an international writer who focuses on diversity and visibility for marginalized people.