Why Aren’t we saving for a college Fund?

by Dee

"My son was murdered." The clear voice on the other end of the phone was Kathy Tyson. A single working, African descendent mother and grandmother of many children. As well, Ms. Tyson was the mother of a 25 year old African Descendent man who was murdered by gun shot.

I called Ms. Tyson last week after I read an article written in the SF Examiner about African descendent mothers who take out life insurance on their own children. First we contacted the author of the piece, Alison Soltau who as a police beat reporter seemed to believe that the reasons for the insurance was because of the rise in homicides of Black youth in Amerikka.

"In the black community most people have always had life insurance policies for their children. My mom had insurance policy for us and I had for my children." Ms Tyson explained.

"Black (families) automatically insure their children cause you never know what the future here is. I think this tradition was started in the time of slavery because (The death of our children) is something that we always fear.

She continued, "how many parents are going to have 30 or 40,000 dollars just laying around." Ms. Tyson elaborated that $30,000 was in fact the going rate for burial costs.

We asked Ms. Tyson if she felt protected by the increased police presence in the Bayview Hunters Point community where she resided and she was clear on the fact that they (the police) are in fact the perpetrators of the violence against the community in many cases rather than the protectors.

The origin of this report occurred when Ms. Tyson told her multi-racial co-workers in her Redwood City office that she had life insurance on her children, and they were shocked as they had never dreamed of saving or spending money on the "death" of their children and rather were saving money for their own children’s college fund., "this got me to thinking, why aren’t we (Black families) saving for college funds for our children?"