With the United States facing substantial challenges over the past week regarding race, many parents are concerned about how they can help their kids make sense of it all. Now, a TikTok video is making the rounds online that some say demonstrates why it’s so important to talk to our kids about these intimidating events. The video shows a father comforting her daughter as she realizes the enormity of racial prejudice in our world.
Mom Jamie Lee Hurtt posted the heartbreaking video to her TikTok on Tuesday, June 2. Hurtt says the moment happened after her daughter, Azariah, asked her parents about the protests she’d seen on TV.
“We looked at each other like, ‘I think it’s time to have a conversation with her,” Hurtt told TODAY. She said the conversation was not easy for 10-year-old Azariah to handle.
“I could die from the color of my skin,” the young girl says in the video through tears.
“I’m sorry,” stepfather Joseph Mckinzie tells her, before embracing his distraught stepdaughter.
@jamieleehurtt Harsh reality… my ten year old daughter’s words😢##blacklivesmatter ##blackkidsmatter ##blackdads ##spreadlovenothate
♬ original sound – jamieleehurtt
“It’s sad that we even have to have the conversation with her, and it’s not like she’s naive… but she started bawling,” Hurrt recalled. “She’s not a very emotional person at all, so it killed us to see her crying.”
Hurtt says she took the video to capture an important moment for her family.
“That moment wasn’t a TikTok,” she told TODAY. “It wasn’t for anybody but our own household. I just wanted to have the memory of that moment for us, for our family.”
It wasn’t until the next day that, after being inspired by a video on her TikTok feed, she decided to share the powerful moment. Since then, the clip has gone viral, with 1.2 million likes and 24,000 comments within a day, reports TODAY. The reaction has been overwhelmingly supportive.
“This beautiful girl made my heart hurt,” wrote one TikTok user. “Sending prayers and good vibes to you.”
“I just had the same talk with my 10-year-old daughter,” said another. “That she could die because of the color of her skin. A child should never, ever have to say this.”
