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The 40-year-old comedian says she always jokes about the reasons when asked, but the truth is far simpler -- and far more tragic.
At 40 years old, Tiffany Haddish has heard all the missives from friends and family about the fact that she doesn't have kids yet. Everyone wants to know if and when she's going to get down to the business of starting her own family.
As it turns out, the actress and comedian has thought long and hard about having kids, and she chooses not to not because of her career aspirations, or any of the other reasons you might expect. No, her truth is far more tragic.
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View Story"There’s a part of me that would like to do that, and I always make up these excuses like, ‘Oh, I need a million dollars in the bank before I do that, I need this, I need that,'" she joked about the prospect of having kids while chatting with Carmelo Anthony on his "What's in Your Glass?" podcast.
Getting visibly emotional as she talked about this, Tiffany continued, "I would hate to give birth to someone that looks like me," she said. "Knowing that they’re gonna be hunted or killed."
"Like, why would I put someone through that?" she asked.
"It's scary," Carmelo, who has a 13-year-old son, agreed. "It's scary to even think about that."
It's a heartbreaking reality made all too resonant amid the Black Lives Matter movement as awareness rises about the Black experience in America, including things like the talks Black parents have to have with their kids about how to interact with the police to minimize the chance they'll get shot and killed.
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View Story"And white people don’t have to think about that," Tiffany said of imagining her children being "hunted or killed."
"It’s time to talk about that, and how we have to come together as a community and work as a unit," she said. "And maybe we don’t all agree on the same things, but we need to just find some common ground and move forward as human beings."
As far as she sees it, though, the answer is so much more simple and yet perhaps the most difficult task of all. "We’re all trying to figure out, how do you fix this? How do you stop this? And I think we have to figure out how to change people’s hearts," she said.
"That’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole career."
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