Washington (CNN)Author, actor and political commentator D.L. Hughley is the father of two African-American children, and he has had the conversation with them that no parent wants to have.
"Every black or brown parent I know has a conversation with their children when they tell them exactly how to act around the police. That is abhorrent," Hughley said in an interview Thursday on CNN's "New Day."
"I don't go to sleep until my children come home, my grown children come home at night. I keep my clothes on ... in case my children need me in the middle of the day. Or in the middle of the night," an emotional Hughley said. "We love our parents, our mothers, our fathers -- they're brutalized, and nobody says anything. It's too much. It's too much."
Speaking with CNN in the aftermath of police shootings in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that left Alton Sterling and Philando Castile -- two African-American men -- dead, Hughley criticized America for being "comfortable" with violence against black people. He said he does not view the deadly shootings of Sterling and Castile as recent events, citing a history of brutality he has seen play out in Los Angeles and California stretching back to Ron Settles, Eulia Love and Rodney King.
"I think that this is something America is comfortable with. You can't keep seeing a thing over and over again, without being complicit in it in some way," said Hughley. "There are people who see these things and go 'It's a rough job, but they have to do or none of us will be safe.' It is hard to take, knowing that you have sons and nephews and daughters and wives, and to watch them be brutalized.
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