Month: February 2017

“He was a normal kid growing up.” 

That’s how Nicole Browder remembers her youngest brother Kalief. It’s been more than a year since 22-year-old Kalief, unable to move on from his torturous three-year ordeal at Rikers Island, took his own life, but his sister’s memories of him are as vivid as ever.

Nicole, who is featured in Spike TV’s upcoming docuseries “Time: The Kalief Browder Story,” opened up to The Huffington Post about the relationship she and her late brother shared before he was sent to jail. While Kalief, who was never actually convicted of the crime that would force him into a cell on Rikers, became emblematic of the United States’ flawed criminal justice system, to Nicole, he was just a normal kid from the Bronx. Her bond with her brother ― who was adopted into the Browder family, just like she was ― was a typical love-hate sibling relationship.

“He was the youngest, so we would pick on him,” Nicole said. But being the youngest had its perks too, she recalled.

“I remember he was really picky about his food [and] what he ate,” she said. “My mother would prepare him special meals… I would get jealous because he would eat Chinese food and we got to eat baloney sandwiches.”

She remembers that Kalief, who was a little small for his age, was sensitive. She remembers that he liked to pull pranks on her as he got older. She remembers his distinct, hearty laugh.

“It was so ugly!” Nicole giggled, while trying to mimic her brother’s throaty chuckle.

As a teenager, Kalief was just as “normal,” but would sometimes get in trouble over “silly things,” Nicole said. He was once arrested for taking a joyride in a bread delivery truck. 

“His friends told him to do it. Peer pressure. And I thought it was hilarious [at the time], but it wasn’t hilarious because he got in a lot of trouble,” she said. That mistake would have serious implications for her brother shortly thereafter. 

In 2010, 16-year-old Kalief was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack, even though his accuser could not seem to get his story straight. Since Kalief was still on probation from the joyride incident, a judge ordered him to be detained unless his family could make the $3,000 bail. When his family couldn’t pay, he was sent over to Rikers Island Correctional Facility where he would stay awaiting trial for nearly three years, roughly two of which were spent in solitary confinement. 

According to The New Yorker, a fight with another inmate spurred Kalief’s first experience in solitary, which lasted two weeks. He would be sent back several times during his stay at Rikers. While in “the bing,” as it was referred to among inmates, Kalief started to lose weight, faced verbal and physical abuse from officers and attempted suicide multiple times. 

When the charges were dismissed and Kalief came home, Nicole realized that her brother wasn’t the same person who had entered the system at 16 years old. Although Kalief had enrolled in classes at Bronx Community College in an attempt to get his life back on track, things started to take a turn for the worse. 

Nicole started to notice small tics that Kalief had picked up since his time in jail. She said he would pace around in a square, something his mother assumed he did to pass the time while in his cell at Rikers; he feared the feds were watching him; paranoia seeped into his interactions with his own family. She said he would pick fights with his mother, Venida, the one person who stood by him through the entire ordeal. 

The night before he took his life, Kalief seemed to have lost all hope, Nicole said. 

“One day he told my mom. ‘I can’t take it no more,’” Nicole said. The next day Venida Browder found her son hanging from a noose he had fashioned from ripped bed sheets, a technique he had learned and attempted several times during his time at Rikers, The New Yorker reported.

The Browder family’s $20 million wrongful lawsuit against New York City was put on hold when Kalief’s mother died in 2016, but Nicole believes true justice for her brother has little to do with monetary compensation.

“Justice to me … is when people start to admit when they are wrong. An apology. Something my mother died [for] and wanted,” she said.

Indeed, Nicole has a grave warning about the predatory criminal justice system: 

“It needs to change, because you know what? You’re going to hear this story again if it [doesn’t] change.”

“Time: The Kalief Browder Story” airs on Spike TV March 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.  

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded a guidance allowing transgender students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity in public schools. While the Obama era guidance clarified that trans students are federally protected from sex discrimination under Title IX, the Trump administration said that it wants to leave LGBTQ rights to the states. Rescinding the guidance opens the door to discrimination against trans students at this level, and sends the message that the government will not stand up for the nation’s most vulnerable kids. 

A common claim that opponents of such protections for trans students make is that allowing transgender people into bathrooms endangers cisgender women and girls. In his much discussed appearance on “Real Time,” alt-right former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos told host Bill Maher that he “makes no apologies for protecting women and children from men who are confused about their sexual identity.” This argument perpetuates the myth that trans people are predators, when they are far more likely to face violence and harassment in restrooms at the hands of cis people.

Yet, Yiannopoulos’s line is a common refrain that continues to be used by those who care little about real, not mythical, violence against women. When walking back LGBTQ protections or promoting so-called “bathroom bills,” proponents of such legislation have said that allowing trans people to use the appropriate restroom means men can “enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls,” and that businesses that allow trans people to use the appropriate restroom pose “a danger to wives and daughters.”

But invoking women’s safety while ignoring real violence faced by women and girls on college campuses, on the street and within their own homes is nothing more than a veil for hate. This so-called protection is a justification for transphobia — and as cisgender women, we’re done being your excuse.

To those who would use my body and the bodies of women like me as an excuse for violence and discrimination: It stops today.

There are no recorded cases of transgender people harming anyone in the bathroom. In fact, trans people are far more likely to encounter violence and harassment themselves. In 2016 alone, at least 27 transgender people were murdered, the majority being transgender women of color. A whopping 41 percent of transgender people will attempt suicide in their lifetimes, compared with just 4.6 percent of the general public, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute. On top of that, trans women encounter structural sexism just as cis women do. Perpetuating the lie that transgender people are predators just feeds into this discrimination. And we cis women never asked for this kind of “protection” to begin with.

Conservatives are right that the safety of women and girls is at risk, but certainly not because of trans people. One in five women will be raped in her life, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and nearly 30 percent of women worldwide will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. Trans people face even more staggering rates of these types of violence. One in two trans people will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, according to the Office for Victims of Crime. Meanwhile, the cis men who commit sexual assault ― if they face consequences at all ― face shockingly light sentences, like Brock Turner who served just three months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

The safety of women and girls is at risk, but certainly not because of trans people.

If opponents of trans protections sincerely cared about the safety of women and girls, they’d care about ending rape culture. They’d care about holding President Trump accountable for more than 15 allegations of sexual assault and harassment against women. And they wouldn’t paternalistically tell us who we ought to fear when we proudly count trans and queer people as part of our communities.

Rescinding the Obama administration’s guidance and rejecting similar protections is simply an act of hate against transgender people. To those who would use my body and the bodies of women like me as an excuse for violence and discrimination: It stops today. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Actor Mahershala Ali brings diversity to this year’s Academy Awards in two vital ways. He’s a black actor at an awards show that’s been heavily criticized for being #sowhite, and he’s Muslim, part of a religion that is often vilified and exploited in Hollywood. 

In an interview in the Radio Times, Ali spoke out the struggles of occupying this specific intersection of race and religion in America. Although these identities make his presence so important at the Academy Awards, being a black Muslim man out in the real world often means you’re a target for multiple kinds of bigotry. 

The “Moonlight” actor, who converted to Islam when he was 25 years old, told the magazine that he isn’t shocked by Islamophobia ― as a black man, he already knows what it feels like to be a victim of discrimination.

“If you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the U.S., the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock. I’ve been pulled over, asked where my gun is, asked if I’m a pimp, had my car pulled apart,” Ali said in the interview. “[Some] Muslims will feel like there’s this new discrimination that they hadn’t received before – but it’s not new for us.” 

Ali also spoke about how his wife, Amatus Sami-Karim, the daughter of an imam, stopped wearing a head scarf because “she had so many bad experiences. She didn’t feel safe anymore.”

Black Muslims make up a significant percentage of America’s Muslim population. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center study, 40 percent of native-born American Muslims describe themselves as black. On the other hand, most foreign-born Muslim Americans are from Arab countries (41 percent) and describe themselves as white (60 percent).

Some black Muslims claim their stories are erased by the stereotype that to be Muslim is to be Arab. Others have written about facing racial discrimination from within their own faith community. 

Ikhlas Saleem, a contributor for Buzzfeed, put it this way:

I’ve inherited a legacy and community where on paper, I should fit into many groups — black, Muslim, black and Muslim. In practice, I am not always welcomed into them, and if I am, people aren’t always sure exactly how I fit … There was a time when being Muslim in America meant being black, but in 2016, I’m the anomaly. I navigate a landscape where I am as likely to remind white Americans that Black Lives Matter as I am to explain it to South Asian and Arab Muslims.

While accepting a Screen Actors Guild Award earlier this year, Ali spoke about how important it was to embrace and celebrate all of the things that make people unique. 

“I think what I’ve learned from working on “Moonlight” is we see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves. And what I was so grateful about in having the opportunity to play Juan was playing a gentleman who saw a young man folding into himself as a result of the persecution of his community and taking that opportunity to uplift him and to tell him he mattered, that he was OK, and accept him. I hope that we do a better job of that.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Karl-Anthony Towns is ahead of schedule by even the highest of expectations.

Yes, he led the University of Kentucky to a 38-1 record and the Final Four, became the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NBA draft and earned Rookie of the Year honors last season. But at 21, he could have flamed equally quickly.

Instead, Towns has emerged as one of the league’s premier big men.

The Minnesota Timberwolves center is both humble and quick to deflect praise. He gives much of the credit to his coaches. And he thanks former T-Wolves teammate and now Los Angeles Clippers consultant Kevin Garnett, whom he keeps in close contact with. 

“KG talks a lot about accountability,” Towns told HuffPost about the man he calls “such a legend.”

“When he does something, right away you pay attention,” Towns added. “If you make a mistake, he’s all about holding you accountable.”

Towns, to be sure, has done his part. 

He’s averaged 24 points, 12 rebounds and 3 assists, according to ESPN.com. No other player in the league boasts such numbers this season. He also ranks 13th in overall efficiency: His 24.55 rating slots him ahead of Stephen Curry, Blake Griffin, DeMar DeRozan, Hassan Whiteside, Marc Gasol and John Wall.

Few players in just their second season have made such drastic improvements to their skill set as Towns has.

One skill that doesn’t necessarily reflect in the box score is Towns’ superior footwork around the basket. His dexterity and his ability to let a defender encroach on his hip and air space have driven up his free-throw opportunities from year one to year two. At the All-Star break, Towns’ 302 free-throw attempts had already surpassed the 275 he managed over his entire rookie season.

Of course, getting to the line and actually converting at the line are two very different things, particularly for centers. Just ask Shaquille O’Neal about that. 

Towns converts 83 percent from the stripe ― an outrageously high rate, better even than that of most guards and such well-known shooters as Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis. He’s also surpassing fellow emerging big men like Anthony Davis and Joel Embiid.

Towns’ silky shooting is what makes him such a dynamic offensive player. He converts a respectable 34 percent from the 3-point distance and is even more effective from 16 to 18 feet, where he asserts himself in three distinct ways: the pick-and-roll, the pick-and-pop and as a slip man.

“I’m very comfortable in the pick-and-roll,” he said. “I like to do it. I’ve grown as a player, I’m glad to say that.”

Towns’ rapid development stems in part from T-Wolves head coach Tom Thibodeau, who embraces the versatility of his young star.

“His skill set is so unique for a 7-footer,” Thibodeau told ESPN.com in November. “He can shoot the 3 with ease from all over the floor ― from the corners, from above the break, from the top of the key. He can put it on the floor. He can change direction. He can Euro-step. He can play back to the basket. He can play a face-up combo game. You can pick-and-roll with him where he’s the screener. You can pick-and-roll with him where he’s the ball handler. He has guard-like skills. He has great vision. He has playmaking ability.”

Towns appreciates that his coach lets him be himself, but also that Thibodeau insists the young T-Wolves follow the program.

“He’s given us a lot,” Towns said of his coach, who took the Minnesota job last August. “Taking accountability … we are more responsible and even tighter knit as a group.”

Before he was drafted, the New Jersey native told HuffPost that he was “not just a basketball player” ― he likes playing golf and baseball, too. More recently, he has been bitten by the acting bug, something he hasn’t done since an assortment of church plays as a kid.

In a recent ad for Jack Link’s beef jerky, he worked out with Sasquatch. “I kind of pinched myself,” Towns said. “I love acting and being able to show my personality.”

This is all what makes Towns such an intriguing young star. He desperately wants to be great, but only within the framework of the team. He wants more opportunities like the Jack Link’s spot, but only when that doesn’t get in the way of his athletic development. He prizes everything about basketball, but he enjoys being well rounded as well.

“I just find ways to take time,” Towns said. “Enjoying little things like being home, talking to family and seeing family grow up.” 

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Email me at jordan.schultz@huffingtonpost.com, ask me questions about anything sports-related on Twitter at @Schultz_Report, and follow me on Instagram at @Schultz_Report. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Black Americans are almost twice as likely to have Type 2 diabetes as white Americans, but they are much less likely to be included in studies that test the safety and efficacy of diabetes medication.

“The burden of diabetes and its complications falls unfairly on minorities, yet they are underrepresented in major clinical trials of new therapies and devices,” said Dr. David Kerr, an endocrinologist and author of an article published in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology in January.

Kerr and his coauthor, Charis Hoppe, reviewed data from seven Type 2 diabetes drug trials assessing cardiovascular risk and found that in five of those trials less than 5 percent of the participants were black. 

Without data to ensure that drugs can safely and effectively treat black patients, doctors can be put in a bind: They can prescribe what is essentially an untested medication for their black patients, or they can forgo prescribing an untested drug, denying those patients a potentially effective treatment.

Most clinical trials have a diversity problem 

Clinical trial research helps scientists, doctors and patients understand whether drugs and devices are safe and effective. Crucially, different people react differently to different drugs. So if your group isn’t adequately represented in a clinical trial, there’s no way for your doctor to be sure if that medicine will be the right one for you. 

Case in point: A common medication used to treat hypertension (angiotensin-converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors), was associated with poorer health outcomes for African-American patients in a 2015 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

ACE inhibitors had been studied in clinical trials, but those trials had so few black patients that it wasn’t clear whether the risk was significant. (This is especially disturbing considering that more than 40 percent of African-Americans in the United States have high blood pressure, compared with about 30 percent of the general population.)

The 2015 study, which included data on nearly 60,000 patients, 47 percent of whom were black, was much more definitive. 

“What we found was, yes, this is actually real,” study author Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe, of New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told The Huffington Post. “Blacks tend to have poorer outcomes when we initiate therapy with that particular drug, compared to whites.”

Why diversity in clinical trials matters

Just because people of different races might react differently to drugs doesn’t mean those difference come down to biology. 

“One of the things is that people always say, ‘Are there genetic differences based on race and ethnicity?’ Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, told HuffPost. 

In Rice’s estimation, probably not. “What really starts to show is that there are some racial and ethnic categories that can serve as a proxy for differences,” Rice explained. 

Those differences, known as the social determinants of health, are the structural factors that influence people’s lives, such as socioeconomic status, education, physical environment, employment, social support and access to health care. 

“There are some differences based on genes, but there are more differences based on environmental factors,” Rice stressed. “When you look at disparities, we know that disparities exist, but we also know that what’s highly influential are social determinants, whether or not someone is going to be able to get access to medications and access to drugs or interventions.”

Barriers to diverse trials 

Part of the problem is that white researchers in academic centers tend to recruit white study participants. (Less than 2 percent of principal investigators on National Institutes of Health-funded research project grants are black, according to the NIH).

“Every time you make the argument for more inclusion, they argue that it’s a matter of cost,” Ogedegbe said. Indeed, diverse clinical trial can carry a higher price tag in the short term.

If participants don’t live near the trial center, there are transportation and child care costs. Time off can be an issue, particularly if a participant works more than one job. 

And then there’s the fear, grounded in history, that the African-American community will once again be exploited by researchers. 

“No matter how many times we have this conversation, the Tuskegee experiment is always and continues to have a significant impact on minority participation,” Rice said, referring to a 1937-1972 study in which black men were left untreated for syphilis so doctors could observe the disease’s progression.

To overcome those barriers, researchers have to hire study coordinators who are skilled at recruiting minority participants. “When I started doing my clinical trials, I had a white coordinator, I had a Hispanic coordinator and I had an African-American coordinator,” Rice noted. 

The result: Her study had significant minority participation. 

Using study coordinators who are already members of a community is one way to build trust. Other ways to improve participation can include building cultural competence among researchers and helping potential study participants understand the benefits of participating in a clinical trial on a personal, community and population level. 

“It really becomes a trust factor, particularly for persons of color,” Rice said. 

Regardless of the extra hurdles, increased participation among minorities is critical for improving clinical trials’ accuracy.

“We can’t afford to be reticent when it comes to including a diverse patient population in clinical trials,” Ogedegbe said. “The results and the cost of not doing that is much worse.” 

Industry, government and researchers need to work harder

While President Bill Clinton’s National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act required federally funded research to include women and minorities in 1993, loopholes in the law mean it’s been loosely enforced. 

And industry-funded pharmaceutical drug studies are held to an even lower standard. 

“I would hold their proverbial feet to the fire,” Kerr said of industry, noting that payers (meaning large corporations and insurance companies) should push pharmaceutical companies to do more than the bare minimum to study drugs and devices in diverse populations.

If the payer won’t cover a drug that hasn’t been rigorously tested on a diverse population, industry might be forced to be inclusive.

If we fail to enforce inclusivity, the future of medicine will continue to be a sphere where only white patients receive the best treatments and, in turn, have the best health outcomes. 

“The cutting edge in medicine today is looking at precision medicine. All of these precision medicine studies, I don’t see blacks in them,” Ogedegbe said. “Where are we going to be 10 years from now? We’ll have advanced in what we know, but guess what? Guess who is getting left out? Minority communities.”

This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: scopestories@huffingtonpost.com. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Hundreds of activists protested near the home of a police officer in Anaheim, California, Wednesday at video allegedly showing the plainclothes cop firing a gun in front of a group of minors. Many chanted, “don’t shoot the kids,” and “arrest violent cops!”

Police have arrested two teenagers in connection with Tuesday afternoon’s confrontation, but Gaby Hernandez, a spokesperson for a group that organized the protest, told The Huffington Post that activists want the “immediate arrest” of the officer for “child abuse” for the incident.

Two videos that witnesses filmed of the dispute have attracted more than 3 million views since Tuesday. The footage shows a white man pulling a 13-year-old Latino boy by his collar as a group of minors watch, repeatedly asking the adult to let him go. Anaheim Police Department later identified the man as an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer, though they did not name him.

In the video, the off-duty officer can be heard saying that the boy threatened to shoot him. The teen can be heard denying the officer’s claim. The teenager adds that the officer called another girl an offensive word for walking on his property. 

One kid rushes at the off-duty officer and the teen, causing them to fall in a bush. Another teenager tries to punch the man but misses. The officer then appears to pull a gun from his waistband and a single gunshot rings out. Police later arrive on the scene. 

The video does not show what led up to the incident, but authorities said it began when a group of kids walked across the officer’s  property on Tuesday at 2:40 p.m., according to an official press release.

Police allege that a 13-year-old boy threatened to shoot the off-duty police officer, “at which time the officer attempted to detain the teen.” Anaheim police confirmed that the off-duty officer fired the gun once, but said no one was struck by gunfire.

Demonstrators assembled Wednesday night in the neighborhood where the footage was filmed condemned the officer’s behavior. Naui Oceloti Hitzilopochtli, a protestor and Orange County resident who lives five miles from the officer’s house, said that the community was upset with the Anaheim police for arresting the teen and not the officer.

“You can tell the people are mad,” Hitzilopochtli told HuffPost.

“If it would have been a [white kid] this would have never happened,” he added. “White kids don’t go through this,” referring to the 13 year old’s arrest. “Only people of Mexican descent or black people.”

Police arrested a 13-year-old boy they believe appeared in the video for criminal threats and battery. They also arrested a 15-year-old for assault and battery, according to an Anaheim police press release issued Tuesday. The off-duty officer was not arrested but is cooperating with the investigation.

A spokesperson for the LAPD told HuffPost on Wednesday that it has launched an administrative investigation into the incident, adding that the off-duty officer is not currently facing any charges. However, he has been placed on administrative duty while the LAPD conducts their investigation, according to NBC4 News.

The teen’s family said that their attorneys are examining the incident.

Alma Jimenez, a woman claiming to be the teen’s mom, said on Facebook she’s asking for justice over the confrontation.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

The actor Jordan Peele is best known for his comedy, or his impression of former President Barack Obama. That may change this weekend, based on early reviews of his inaugural film ― a fusion of comedy and horror set to debut in the U.S. on Friday. 

“Get Out,” a psychological thriller about racism written and directed by Peele, earned a coveted 100-percent score on the film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

That means that all reviews for the film on the site so far ― 40, as of Wednesday evening ― are positive. To put that into perspective, only four films of hundreds released in 2016 earned a 100-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Peele described “Get Out” as a “social thriller,” according to entertainment news site IGN. The film is about a young black photographer (played by Daniel Kaluuya) visiting his white girlfriend’s family in upstate New York.

The film, Peele told USA Today, was originally about exploring “the fears of being an outsider,” but he later decided the theme should be about race.

“It just seemed to be a very taboo piece of the discussion to talk about something so horrific as racism in any type of genre other than a film about slavery or something,” Peele said.

Even in the trailer, it’s easy to see that the film explores black-white relations, with white people as the obvious antagonists.

“I knew that this premise was a very tricky one and one that has a lot of potential pitfalls,” Peele said in an interview with IGN. 

“I knew that the only way to make this movie work, besides getting the tone right, was that the plot would have to reveal the judgments and the presumptions we would have about the movie are in fact our presumptions,” he continued. 

Not all review sites were as generous as Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s IMDB webpage listed a 77 Metascore, which weights reviews according to the fame of the critic. Still, reviews of “Get Out” from a secret screening last month at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival say the film provides a horrifyingly fresh take on race relations in modern America.

“Clearly, ‘Get Out’ will play very differently to black and white audiences — and if the film doesn’t rile a significant contingent of the latter, it simply isn’t doing its job,” Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote in his review.

Debruge added that Peele’s work is a “watershed feat” that delivers “a gloriously twisted thriller that simultaneously has so much to say about the state of affairs in post-Obama America.”

If you’re looking for the politically correct in Peele’s film, give up now.

“I definitely take a devilish glee in putting something that’s not politically correct into the mainstream,” Peele told USA Today. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Social media is all about keeping up appearances: That casual selfie you took with your boo and posted to Instagram? No one needs to know that was your 35th try and the other 34 pics are total garbage. 

The BuzzFeed video above gives us an all-too-real glimpse into what goes into achieving the perfect pic when you’re in a relationship. If you’ve ever loved someone ― but loved your social media reputation just as much ― you’re bound to relate. 

The HuffPost Lifestyle newsletter will make you happier and healthier, one email at a time. Sign up here.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

If you’re a millennial or simply a fan of “Mad Men,” the odds that you own a mid-century modern style sofa are high. 

You may even own a Peggy, the popular mid-century number West Elm recently pulled from its website after a piece titled “Why Does This One Couch From West Elm Suck So Much?” was published at the Awl last week. 

Given the news, now is as good of a time as ever to reconsider our love affair with mid-century modern. Sure, it’s retro and Pinterest-worthy, but are these couches really all that comfy? 

If you’re second guessing your choice, we’ve got you covered. Below, 19 chunky, comfy sofas that are practically begging you to take a nap on them. So low-slung, so sexy, right? 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

A photo of a 2-year-old Nigerian boy is going viral after he lost a race for an absolutely adorable reason.

On Tuesday, Imoh Umoren tweeted a photo of his toddler son, Imoh Umoren II. “My son finished 4th in the race because instead of running across the finish line he ran to hug me,” he wrote. “Ah well won my heart.”

The tweet received over 11,000 likes and 6,400 retweets.

Umoren is an indie film director who lives in Lagos. He told The Huffington Post that Imoh just started attending his school, which held the sports competition this week. He participated in the toddlers category.

“It was his first race, but we had been rehearsing all week in the front yard,” Umoren said. On the day of the race, Imoh had a strong start, but “it sort of fell apart when he spotted me taking a picture of him and came to hug me,” the dad said. 

“I think part of it may be that he always ran into my arms while we were doing our little training at home,” he added. “But he’s a bit of a hugger, and maybe to him, that is a natural ending to a race: run into daddy’s arms.”

In that moment, Umoren tried to get his son back on course. “I was telling him to stop, but he couldn’t figure out why he had to,” the dad recalled. “He ran towards me giggling, so I had to explain to him he had to get to the finish line. I don’t think he realized it was a competition!”

Imoh did eventually get back into the race and ultimately finished in fourth place. He had chance to redeem himself when placed third in a later event that day.

Umoren said his son is an incredibly sweet kid. “I’m just really lucky to have him,” he told HuffPost. “One time I was trying to teach him numbers, and he was struggling a bit with it. When he saw I was slightly disappointed, he said ‘I’m sorry’ and gave me a hug. I mean, I cried a little because he earnestly gives everything his best effort.”

The dad said Imoh is very determined and always picks himself up when he falls down (literally). The toddler is also very intuitive.

“He’s a pretty smart kid for his age and can sense when you’re having a bad day and literally come and kiss you and offer you water,” Umeron said, adding, “I’m trying to raise him to be a good man because in a crumbling world we need some sunlight.”

H/T BuzzFeed

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices