Singer Kelly Rowland is acutely aware of the pressures of raising a black son in America, especially when the names of slain black children and teens like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown constantly dominate headlines.
Rowland sat down with HuffPost Live’s Marc Lamont Hill on Friday and explained how she is grappling with that racial climate now that she has welcomed her own son Titan into the world.
“I remember being pregnant and I remember, of course, finding out that it was a boy, and I had a moment in the mirror where I had a mild anxiety attack because … it was so many things going on, of course,” she said. “It got me to thinking and I had a little anxiety attack because I was like, ‘I have to raise a great man, and he has to know his identity.'”
The “Motivation” singer hopes to teach Titan valuable lessons that he can look to for guidance, she said:
I’m breathing hard just thinking about it and my heart is racing because you know, you want to make sure that you instill in them values and morals and their self-worth, and that to me is so important. And I don’t want him to get it from the rest of the world. He needs to get it from home so that when he goes into the world he has a great sense of self respect and identity and he knows who he is and he has respect for others as well.
While the “very scary” prospect of guiding Titan through his adolescence is daunting, Rowland said her husband Tim Witherspoon “has it down to a science.”
“His parents did such a great job of raising him. … I’m just so thankful that I have him because he even has things that he wants to apply to our son and things that he had to learn as a young black man,” she said.
