Lauren Speed-Hamilton says her biggest fear about raising a biracial child has changed since she welcomed her son, Ezra.
During an appearance on Cam Newton’s Funky Friday podcast, the Love Is Blind star recalled the conversations she and her husband, Cameron Hamilton, had about race before they became parents. Back then, Lauren worried that their son might grow up feeling like he didn’t fully belong anywhere.
“I actually broke down and cried and I was like, you know, I don’t want him to go through feeling like he doesn’t belong anywhere, you know, cuz some people who are um biracial, they say they don’t feel fully accepted here, they say they don’t feel fully accepted there. And I just didn’t want that for my son,” she shared.
These days, Lauren worries most about Ezra’s safety. She says she’s raising him as a Black boy and wants him to know how to protect himself, especially in encounters with police.
She gave an example from her husband’s childhood in Maine, where he grew up around hunting and got a knife as a boy. Lauren worries that if Ezra carried one in Atlanta, someone might see him as a threat.
“First off, this is Atlanta. This is not Maine. If he’s a little boy with a knife in his pocket, that could be deadly for him,” she explained.
That’s one reason Lauren wants Ezra to spend time with the Black men in her family. She wants her brother and her uncle, who has taken on a grandfather role in Ezra’s life, to help him navigate situations they understand firsthand.
“We’ve all sat down and been like, he needs to have um these black men leading him in areas that can kind of teach him those things. I’m not a black man,” she said.
Despite their different upbringings, Lauren and Cameron agree on what matters most for their family.
“We’re all family and at the end of the day, I know I keep going back to this, but we just all want to be healthy, happy, and safe for sure,” she added.
