Actress and comedienne Tiffany Haddish may be a successful black woman in America, but she says racism has made her afraid to have children because they could be “hunted or killed.”
Speaking on the Carmelo Anthony’s YouTube series “What’s In Your Glass,” Haddish said she has always struggled with the thought of having children for various reasons, racism being chief among them.
“I’m a little older, and people are always like, ‘You gonna have a baby? When are you gonna have some babies?” the 40-year-old Haddish said. “There’s a part of me that would like to do that, and I always make up these excuses like, ‘Oh, I need a million dollars in the bank before I [do that], I need this, I need that.’ But really, it’s like, I would hate to give birth to someone that looks like me knowing that they’re gonna be hunted or killed. Like, why would I put someone through that?”
“I am not a fearful person, but, like, I have watched many of my friends — not many, but more than two — of my friends growing up be killed by police officers, and it makes you feel like, ‘Dang, as a black person, we’re being hunted,’” she continued. “And I’ve always felt like that. We’re hunted, and we’re slaughtered. And it’s like they get this license to kill us, and that’s not okay.”
Carmelo Anthony said that being a father to black children amid racism is “scary to even think about.” Haddish said that such a thought is a luxury for white people.
“And white people don’t have to think about that, that’s something they don’t have to think about,” Haddish said. “And [so I talk] about that, and how we have to come together as a community and work as a unit. And maybe we don’t all agree on the same things, but we need to just find some common ground and move forward as human beings.”
Going forward, Haddish said she hopes black people figure out a way to change people’s hearts.
“We’re all trying to figure out, how do you fix this?” Haddish said. “How do you stop this? And all I can think is, we gotta figure out how to change people’s hearts, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole career. … Everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to see their family slaughtered.”
Speaking with CNN at a Black Lives Matter protest back in June, Haddish said that police pull her car over whenever she drives to Beverly Hills.
“There’s certain people in my family, if they walk out the door, they might not come back. I try to laugh and figure out a way to make it funny,” Haddish said. “It’s really hard. I got PTSD watching my friends being killed by the police. It’s scary. You shouldn’t be scared to be in America.”
RELATED: ‘Sex and the City’ Author Regrets Not Having Kids: I Felt ‘Truly Alone’