Timothy and Karolyn Stephens have been married for 14 years. They have three children: Timothy, Jr. is 12. Shawn is 9 and Alana is 7.
What does this family look like in your eyes?
According to different studies, the way you imagined this family just might be fueling the racial divide across the country.
“We can have an honest, open conversation,” Timothy said. “There’s nothing off-limits with me.”
Stephens says when it comes to talking to his children about protests and marches in the past four months honesty is best while putting it on their level.
With that, it’s challenging.
“I always tell them that my opinions are not going to necessarily be the same as their mother’s,” he said. “We both grew up in very different worlds.”
Timothy grew up in Macon, Georgia in an all-black neighborhood where he says his family experienced racism. His wife, Karolyn, grew up in Westerville.
He says he grew up feeling like he always had to be the “best of me,” in order to not give any reason for an interaction with a police officer to go in the “opposite direction.”
He believes we develop perception based on what we know. In the last four months with protests over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as much as he and his wife try to mold their children’s’ perceptions about race and police, he says he and his wife find themselves reshaping their own.
“As much as we’re teaching them, we are also learning ourselves,” he said. “I think we’re probably learning more than they are about our own self.”
Regardless of the divide and regardless of opinion, Timothy knows he and his wife, along with all parents, have a responsibility.
“Our job as your parents is to raise you in an environment that sees no color,” he said. “That sees no judgment.”
In his house, he says the word “hate” is not allowed. It’s his family’s way of doing their part to spread, what he says, is the only thing that can fix our broken society.
“The biggest thing that’s going to get us through this is love,” he said.
Stephens, a Navy veteran, also says he believes state laws need to be looked at and evaluated when it comes to police and rules of engagement.