Sherri Shepherd has been sharing her experience of raising a preteen Black boy as a single mother and, spoiler, it ain’t easy.
In a recent interview with The Breakfast Club, the former The View host said that her 13-year-old son Jeffrey doesn’t like Black girls because they are “mean.”
According to Shepherd, her son goes to a predominately white school and his interactions with the few Black girls who go there haven’t been great.
“I am going through this thing, he likes these girls,” she said. “Because he came in and he said, ‘Mommy, I like white girls.”
She adds: “The little Black girls get mean with him.”
The Black girls apparently “don’t wanna speak” and “sometimes they act crazy,” which has been confusing to Jeffrey.
“And he’s like, ‘Why they act so crazy?’” Shepherd says. “And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. So I keep trying to tell the little girls to be nicer so he can come towards you. But the other girls see him and they go, ‘Hey, Jeffrey’ and they wanna feel his hair…”
Shepherd’s son was especially confused by one Black girl in particular who “moved her neck” when she talked to him.
When she asked the hosts for advice for how to handle the situation, Charlamagne Tha God recommended that Shepherd keep her son close to strong male figures, while Angela Yee offered that Shepherd should bring her son around more kids that look like him.
Shepherd’s comments were reminiscent of a recent interview with actress Gabrielle Union who discussed a similar experience with her own children. Union opened up to Refinery29 about schooling her two stepsons on colorism after noticing they were only attracted to light-skinned girls.
You can catch Shepherd talking about her son at the 37-minute mark below: