In a recent Red Table Talk interview, actress Sandra Bullock opened up about her fears as the mother of two Black children and her particular concerns for 11-year-old son Louis.
E! News, after having adopted the little boy at just 10-days-old, Bullock has been very intentional about being honest with her son about the ways of the world.“I’ve been schooling Lou since he was 6 years old,” she said during the chat.
“And I let him see everything. I let him see everything on television. I let him process it. He knows how the world works. He knows how cruel it is. How unfair it is and now [his sister] Laila is knowing it.”Bullock added that she sometimes wonders if her fears might be creating “all kinds of existential anxiety” for Louis and her 8-year-old daughter. But she recognizes that her fears are accurate and protective and a great tool in helping her children understand what they will face once they leave her house.
“With Lou being a young Black man, at one point, sweet, funny Lou is gonna be a young man. And the minute he leaves my home, I can’t follow him everywhere, though I will try,” she explains, echoing the concerns of so many Black parents. “I will try, and I’m joking, but I’m not. I don’t know what I will do, but I pray and pray and pray that I have done a good enough job, scared them sufficiently.”
During the chat with Jada Pinkett-Smith, Adrienne Bannfield and Willow Smith, Bullock also shared that she takes cues from the children to understand what conversations they need to have, revealing that she’s often the one learning from them.
A recent incident, People reports, helped her realize just how aware of the world her daughter is. Bullock recounts that she approached Laila after noticing the little girl leaving the room dejected after finding her father, Bryan Randall, watching the popular Netflix series “Squid Game.”
When she asked why Laila was sad, Bullock says her daughter didn’t want Randall watching the series “because there’s no Black people in it.”
“The fact that there was fire in her belly made me so happy that she was already voicing,” Bullock says.