When Clint Smith was a child his dad warned him against playing with toy guns with his friends. He didn't get it then, but different rules applied to him.
Now, with his own children, the black American author says he understands his father's fears.
Smith wrote an article for The Atlantic titled Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter . He wrote the piece as protests over police brutality against black people continue throughout the US and world in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground with his knee on his neck for almost nine minutes.
Mourners in Minneapolis, where the unarmed black man died in police custody, heard how his tragedy could finally bring change. (Source: Other)
Turning to the future though, Smith told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning it's hoped the fight against racism will change the world for future generations.
"I think people in the United States have a new vocabulary, they have a framework, they have a new understanding that is systemic and structural, rather than interpersonal, of what racism is and how it manifests itself.
"I think as a result we are moving the conversation around racism, in the United States is much more sophisticated than it was several years ago and I think as a result we are in a position to see different policies that will significantly, hopefully impact the black community."
Smith explained he comes from a long tradition of people who continue to work for equality "against all odds".
"I think of enslavement. Black people in this country were enslaved for 250 years and there were people who were fighting against slavery every single day of their lives since the day they were brought to these shores.
"The vast majority of people who fought against enslavement never saw the end of slavery but that doesn't mean that their work didn't mean something, that doesn't mean that their work didn't contribute to the work that the next generation did, that the next generation did.
"At some point an opportunity opened up, enough people were chipping away at that wall that eventually we got to the other side, and so the work that we do now even is not so that I can see the fruits of it's labour, or even so my children can see the fruits of labour, it is so someone in an intergenerational way beyond me, generations from now might live in a radically different world than the one we do now."
Having his own children, aged 3 and 1, was a "reminder of how high the stakes are", Smith said.
"They are a reminder of why it is so essential to build a better world than the one we have now because this has been an intergenerational conversation in black American's homes."
It comes amid Black Lives Matter protests in the British capital. (Source: Other)
Smith said his grandfather had a conversation with his father, his father with him and one day he will have with his own kids.
"I'm thinking a lot about what that conversation looks like and how do you convey to a young person the realities of the world without making it seem as if they have done something to deserve it?" he asked.
When Smith's dad talked to him, it was after calling him inside from a water pistol fight in a car park with his white and Asian friends.
"When I was young I didn't think actively about my relationship to them [friends] in terms of the colour of my skin, but my father made clear the implications of you playing with what is even a toy gun or a water gun at night are so different are so different than they are for your other friends.
"I didn't fully understand it then but now that I have my own children you understand the risk that are involved and I think we've seen over the past several years the, sort of, fatal manifestations of the fear that own father had when he saw me with that gun," Smith said, citing the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot dead by police while playing with a toy gun.
Curfews are still being broken in many cities, but the vast majority of demonstrators have been peaceful. (Source: Other)
SHARE ME