They tried always to walk with pride

Whether it was his father, Larry, who worked in the produce department of a grocery store in his native Dallas, or his stepfather, Jonas Claiborne, a technician at Texas Instruments, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford looked to them to see how to carry himself.

“Just the perceptions that people sometimes draw and place upon you is something that was communicated to me, nonverbally, just by the way that they interacted with folks and by the way that they tried to always walk with pride and engage with pride and be unabashedly unintimidated.”

Now that Ford, 48, and his wife, Berna, are raising three sons — Avery, Aaron II and Alexander — as well as their nephew, Devin, he makes sure they’re never unaware that they are examples. How they act has ramifications that reach way beyond themselves. All it takes is one misstep to have someone write them off as how they, the family, African Americans or Americans in general always behave.

“If you were to ask my sons who they represent, they would say, ‘I represent myself, the Ford name, African Americans and our country,’ ” Ford says. “It’s a blessing to be able to do that but also, sometimes, an unfair burden. It’s something I think that is at the forefront of my sons’ and my nephew’s minds at all times when they try to interact.”

As for the burden part of that equation, he admits it can be hard when “you have to shoulder the entirety of your race or your identity through your actions and interactions with other folks, and through your activities and through your accomplishments or failures.”

That message of representation stuck with his sons and nephew, Ford says, because it’s been reinforced, early and often.

“I’ve told them, point blank, on several occasions and reminded them beyond that. It’s funny, because this morning I was talking to my oldest son, and he said, on his own volition, ‘I remember who I represent.’ … It made me smile, because it’s a reflection of conversations that we’ve had over the course of time.”