Watch this when
Traffic Stop
One traffic stop, and the colour-blind world he was raised to believe in was gone.
Who it's for
For people of colour raised in white families, the experience of racism can be hard to share with parents who have never faced it.
Feelings it meets
What it is
A StoryCorps animated short in which Alex Landau, a Black man adopted and raised by white parents, talks with his mother, Patsy Hathaway, about being pulled over by Denver police in 2009. He had been raised to believe skin color didn't matter, and the encounter, in which he was badly injured, broke that belief. The two discuss how the experience still affects him and how it affected her.
Where to find it
YouTube, StoryCorps channel (free); also on storycorps.org with a transcript.
Before you start
Heads up: Graphic police violence and racism.
Age: Ages 14+
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 1
