Surely, now is the time to reflect on the beauty and hope of new life, not the pain and ugliness of this world.

I am reminded that, as a Black person in America, we have rarely in life taken a deep breath.

As my airways tighten, and I search for the right relaxation mantra to calm myself, I think of my two Black brothers, my Black father, and my Black cousins in Minneapolis.

My nursing assistant mother and cab driver/security guard/perennial-entrepreneur father, like so many of my neighbors, worked their ways into the suburbs to give their children that elusive gift of “a better life.” This leap was particularly large for my father, who was born in a Yoruba village in southern Nigeria, the second youngest of 12 children, with no memory of his own father who died of a heart attack when he was only 4 years old.

But, despite the many statistics that demonstrate that life for Black people in Minnesota is marked by unfair treatment and discriminatory systems, many Minnesotans hold on to the belief that life is at least “better” there because of Minnesotan progressiveness.

I remember telling my father that I had accepted a post-graduate fellowship in New Orleans, and his fearful reply: “But people are racist down there!” At 22, I laughed at my Black immigrant father’s willingness to buy into the Minnesotan narrative; despite his two decades of personal experience with discrimination ―  in work, in housing, in banking, in the criminal justice system ― my father had been taught that the “real racism,” the kind to be feared, was “down South.”.

Still, I try to sigh away the painful knowledge that this society is constructed around the assertion that my baby’s life — like Arbery, Taylor and Floyd’s — already matters less than its white counterparts before it has even left the womb.

But Black mothers in America have always known what it is like to carry a life that the world has already decided will not matter.

I think of George Floyd’s pregnant mother and I wonder, when he slid from her warm body, how acutely could she feel his mortality.

As a Black American murdered by the police, before your killer is even questioned, the first thing the world will know is a list of your wrongs.

When my personal anxiety slideshow starts, and I see the many ways my family members might die in a fateful encounter with the police, I think of my father.

I think of how, before his Black body would even be cold, the world would rather hear of his arrest record than to know he is a father and grandfather, that he is bilingual, or that, when we were little, he would rally all the kids at the playground into one big game of “monster tag” that we would play past dusk, until the mosquitos stuck to the sweat on our skin.

Bill Cassidy explain that Black people are predisposed to dying from this disease — ignoring social determinants of health like stress, poverty, and racism in favor of racist biological determinism — I was quickly reminded that as Black folks, our untimely deaths are already explained for us.

Like so many of us, my quarantine life has meant infrequent hair washing and forgetting about bras entirely.

My mind went through a checklist that Black and brown people in this country must learn to use.

With my brown skin and frizzy hair, I have experienced both anti-Black racism and light-skin privilege throughout my life?

Behind clichés like “good hair” are a bitter truth; the roll of the genetic die that determines how “Black” you look also determines how the world will see you.

In moments like this one, I fear that for too many Black people in America, being lucky doesn’t even mean surviving.

But now I need to turn my attention to my higher purpose in this moment: to give birth to our newest member of society, and to make sure they know from the moment they’re born, that despite what the world may tell them, their life matters

Latona speaks, writes and builds community around the intersections of birth justice, racial justice, parenting for liberation and Black body politics