In, “My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children”, by Hilton Als the author explains the transition from being in an apartment to being in a house; as well as describing his upbringing with his mother as people of color living in Brooklyn, NY. As he goes into detail Als describes a conversation he had with his mother in which they were in the middle of a protest against police brutality; in their new home, “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.” As they watched the scene that was going on outside through their window, The rioting of black men and throwing of objects at police officers, his mother tells him silently to be quiet so they can survive.  Knowing that the reason the protest was going on was because another black boys life was taken at the hands of the police. His mother is simply trying to protect her sons life by silencing him. The idea of silence returns when Als says, “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.” This seems to be a common theme that silence is a ‘need’ among black boys / people of color in general in order to keep them safe and alive. These two quotes express how it was living back then, when life was fresh of the Jim Crow era and helps paint the picture of what needed to be done to simply get through the day. Back on  terms of the protest, Als also says “but in order to have the perceived weight of white men they had to reject, to some degree, the silence they had learned from their mothers. If they were going to die, they were going to die screaming.” I found this to be a strong sentence. After the silence that black men where taught he describes that if they were to die they needed to go out loud to match the weight of concern that people have for white men deaths. I find it sad that in order for people to care he believes that commotion needs to be caused, however that is, unfortunately, our reality .