WS Chronicle

Every night I make time in my schedule, after serving others in my community, to sit down at the dinner table and enjoy a meal with my wife and my three children. We talk about life, politics, education and current events. Lately, I admit that I don’t know what to say to my 16- and 15-year-old sons about the current state of black men in America. Lately, I’m concerned when they leave the house because their safety is out of my control.   

As a black man, I have had the lottery experience of: 

-being held at gunpoint by a police officer, 

-enduring the degradation and humiliation of my private body parts being patted down in a public street without just cause,  

-and of having the police simply called on me because others thought that I fit the description of someone that “didn’t belong.”

The images in my head that I have of these experiences are horrific and often unbearable. Nevertheless, it is true that I try daily to change the narrative as a city councilman and as chairman of Public Safety for the City of Winston-Salem. 

It is also true that sometimes I just don’t know what to say to my children at the dinner table about the state of black men in America. 

I’ll keep pushing and fighting until that changes for the better.

James Taylor, 

Publisher, The Chronicle