Just two weeks after Sesame Place near Philadelphia courted controversy when one of their characters dismissed two Black children, a similar incident unfolded at a Chuck E. Cheese.
In a world where it's possible for a Black man to get the police called on him for trying to deposit checks from a racial discrimination settlement, everyday life can be filled with even more stress and guesswork than usual.
When you regularly face discrimination and hatred, you find yourself vetting the people you meet and wondering who you can be safe with and who could secretly mean you harm.
And sadly, this vigilance must also extend further as parents will see reason to believe their children are facing similar discrimination when their light cooing is treated as loud screaming. Or as in a recent case, when they're denied the same affection that literally all of the white children around them are shown.
And one New Jersey mom is confident that this is what happened to her two-year-old daughter during a recent outing to Chuck E. Cheese.