The essay, “My Mother’s Dreams For Her Son and All Black Children” by Hilton Als is primarily about racism against black people in America. The quote “Standing by my mother’s living-room window, I tried, tentatively, to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look: Boy, be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seemed to say.” shows the mindset that many black people had during this time. That was that they just had to stay quiet and accept what was going on because it is more dangerous to speak out about the oppression they face. This is important to the text because it is almost like a message to other black children growing up in my opinion. It shows how people thought in the past and gives them a chance to make the world better in the future. The quote ​​“Like any number of black boys in those neighborhoods, I grew up in a matrilineal society, where I had been taught the power—the necessity—of silence.” was also very important. This shows how many children growing up were taught to silence themselves in order to ensure their safety. Also, the fact they explicitly said “black boys” shows that black men wore mostly targets and were in most danger if they broke the silence. A quote that stood out to me in this text is “What I felt during that first wave of panic was a muscle memory of riots and rootlessness; the thought of those cops took away my feeling of being at home in my home.” That stood out to me because it shows that he believed his home was getting better and then after this riot, he began to feel unsafe in his home once again. It may have triggered some of the memories of things he was told growing up and it also shows that many of the problems that existed back then still exist now, even if it isn’t completely visible.