In “My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children”, Als writes on page 3 “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.” In this quote, he is trying to say that as a black person, using your voice could get you in trouble or even killed. Similarly, in the days of slavery, slaves could not communicate with each other and were not allowed to speak unless spoken to. If they had done otherwise, they would be punished. Though blacks technically had the constitutional right to freedom of speech back then, they still had to be careful with what they say, like in the days of slavery. Right after the quote, Als writes “Did I want to be another Richard Ross, one of the hundred or thousand Richard Rosses out there?” on page 3. Earlier, he mentioned that Richard Ross was shot by a cop for allegedly robbing a Jewish person. He uses that quote to hint that he could be shot by a cop if he does not keep quiet.

On page 5, Als writes “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.” In this quote, Als is saying that because of the color of their skin, blacks did not deserve anything that they worked hard to attain, including peace, happiness, or equality. It shows that black Americans were not respected in that time period, and it reflects even the time period that we are in right now where black Americans do not get respect. He is trying to show that no matter how hard that black Americans work to prove themselves, they may never get what they truly deserve. By saying “our not-country”, he is saying that he does not view America as “his country” since the country does not respect him.  

Another segment that interested me was a quote on page 3 where Als writes “Something else Ma wanted: for black people in Brooklyn, in America, not to forever be effectively refugees—stateless, homeless,without rights, confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died, all while trying to rear children who went to schools that taught them not about themselves but about what they didn’t have.” This quote partly reflects what is happening with black Americans in this country today. They are still being confined “by a penal system that killed them before they died”. Some black Americans are unrightfully jailed. Some are proven innocent and released many years or even decades later and still cannot have a normal life because their record shows that they have been jailed and there are new reports on that. In schools, not much in the way of black history is taught. Growing up, very rarely was anything about a black scientist or a black mathematician mentioned. The most that is taught in schools about black history is slavery and maybe a little about the civil rights activists. However, as time goes on, more and more achievements by black Americans are starting to shine through.