“The world around us was not the one we had worked hard to achieve but the quiet, degraded world that our not-country said we deserved. We couldn’t keep nothing, the elders said, not even ourselves.” As a result of the Brownsville riots, Als felt that they hurt the sense of community everyone in the Brownsville community had built up until then. The accumulation of destruction and ruin that came from the riots made it difficult to recognize the community they worked so hard to mold and once saw as home. Through this quote, Als is emphasizing how the riots took possession of their achievements and fruition, along with his point about Blacks still living as refugees “within certain borders” in America. The uprising robbed them of hope and his Ma’s desires. As Als also highlighted, their community as a result of the riots is not what they deserved after how hard they worked to achieve such an established community, but instead is what America projects they deserved. This contributes to the overall narrative that Blacks are refugees in such a country that doesn’t work in their favor. This adds to the intentional hindrances and barriers set in place, in order to put a halt to Black success and in this case, a well-established community like Brownsville.

“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.” As much as Als yearned to protect his mother and sisters, he desired to be protected too. In this quote, Als compares himself with the fellow Black boys in his neighborhood that also grew up in a society where mothers served as both a mother and father. And more specifically, the familiarized importance of remaining silent, its inescapability, but mostly, the might it provides. This quote makes me think of the reputed notion that Black men need to be tough along with its pressures, and how they’re expected to behave a particular way and avoid vulnerability. In relation to the title, Als’ mother’s dream for “All Black Children” is seen through her teaching that silence is power is pertinent to other Black families, where extinguishing your voice for your life is necessary, in the face of hardships.

“For a while, I thought their looting and carrying on had to do with enacting a particular form of masculinity: if white men and cops could wreak havoc in the world, why couldn’t they? But, as I grew older, I realized that part of their acting out had to do with how we were brought up. They weren’t trying to be men—they were already men—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 find this quote to be very emotive, as it breaks down the expectations held for young Black men. They aren’t allowed to be boys and are forced to be confined in this image of what a Black man should be at such young ages. In this quote, Als apprehends and recognizes that the reasoning behind their looting and actions were not to project a sense of masculinity, but instead were because of their upbringing and how they were pushed to act so masculine. In order to level up to the “perceived weight of white men”, Als says that they are forced to subdue the silence they took in from their mothers and this was their way of retaliating.