Known for playing the younger version of Sterling K. Brown’s Randall Pearson on “This Is Us”, 12-year-old Lonnie Chavis has written an open letter on the racism he has endured.
What began as a letter to his mother became a powerful and candid essay about what it’s like to be a Black male on the cusp of adolescence in 2020, published in its entirety in People.
“My life matters, but does it?” he writes. “America paints a very clear picture of how I should view myself. America shows me that my Blackness is a threat, and I am treated as such.”
Writing that his parents showed him such movies as “Amistad” and “Malcolm X” to help him understand the racism he’d encounter, he admitted to being “overwhelmed with confusion, fear, and sadness.”
He also describes the experience of being “a young Black boy in Hollywood,” recalling the first time he “realized there are not a lot of people that look like me on these Hollywood sets and asked my mom where all the Black people were.”
He then shares a recollection of being “racially profiled at a restaurant in San Diego while visiting one of my young Black co-stars. Her Black cousins and I were accused by a young white girl working the cash register of trying to steal the few tips in her tip cup. It was a huge ordeal that almost led to police being called on us while we were with our parents — until some wonderful fan who happened to be white told them that I was a professional actor on two television series currently airing and argued that he doubted I would need to steal her few dollars… Can you imagine someone thinking you are a thief just because of the colour of your skin? I can.”
RELATED: Porsha Williams Recalls Her First Experience With Racism At Age 6
He talked of being in his mother’s car when she was pulled over for the crime of “driving while Black”: “The white cop approached my mother’s window and asked her, ‘Whose car is this?’ — not about her license and registration, or even why he pulled us over… She had to go to her trunk for more paperwork, and I watched the cop hold his hand on his gun as if my mom was a threat. I was scared for her; I was scared for me.”
He also detailed the time police showed up at his door, when an officer “twisted my dad’s arm behind his back and pulled him from our doorstep with the door opened, claiming he was being detained for a traffic ticket. My mother ran to my room and told me with fear in her eyes to go into my little brother’s room and stay away from the windows. She put my new baby brother in my arms and told me that no matter what I hear from our front yard to not come to the door — no matter what. I held my baby brother and cried as I could hear my mother yelling outside of our home. I thought my parents were for sure going to die going up against the police. By the grace of God, they are both still with me, and that racially motivated harassment against my father was dismissed. Can you imagine holding on to your three little brothers while thinking that you are all going to be orphans? I can.”
Chavis concluded by writing, “You don’t understand what’s going on in the world, then understand this: This is what the world looks like for me. A 12-year-old Black boy. This is my America. Policies need to change, laws need to change, the police need to change, Hollywood needs to change, hearts need to change, America needs to change. Change has got to happen for unarmed Black citizens to not live in fear of being murdered. Can you imagine being me in 2020 and wondering what the future holds? I can’t.”
