I grew up in a very white town. In my entire high school of 2,000 students, I can only think of 3 African-American students, and a couple Asian students. And I didn't have classes with any of them, so I really didn't get to know anyone who wasn't white.
My college was slightly more diverse than my hometown...but not by a lot. But my freshman year I volunteered for a tutoring program in inner city Chicago. Once a week a group of us from my college would head into the city and tutor a group of low-income kids, most of whom were black. And it was the first time I'd ever come face-to-face with white privilege.
I remember distinctly the day my eyes were opened to my privilege as a middle-class white person. I was sitting talking with a little girl while she colored. She was probably only 7 or 8. I asked if she had dreams about where she might want to go to college. She said, "I'm not going to college."
"Oh," I said. "What are you going to do after high school?"
"Kill myself."
I was speechless. For me, although I went through a season of not wanting to go to college, it was always an option. A given that that's what you do after high school. This little girl didn't have that option. And not only did she not have that option, but she saw no hope at all for life as an adult.
I suppose I could've had that conversation with a poor child of any race, but the fact is that our system is built in such a way that poverty persists among minorities far more than among whites. Opportunity, while not impossible, is harder to come by for minorities than it is for white people.
After college I went to another very white environment - a large Milwaukee suburban church. Milwaukee, by the way, ranks #1 in the country for being the most racially segregated. That said, I did live in a very diverse apartment complex, but most of my time was spent at my non-diverse church. And there I became friends with an amazing Latina woman, who is married to a wonderfully kind black man.
Her husband frequently studied in our church library during the week. One day he stepped out of the library to make a phone call in the lobby, and someone visiting saw him and reported a "suspicious man" in the lobby, wanting to call the police. I'd never witnessed this kind of racial bias first hand and it took quite a bit of pondering, "Why would they think he was suspicious?" before I realized it was his race. My eyes were opened that day to the realities of being alive while black.
I don't know the details of Michael Brown's death. I don't know if it was a genuine case of a cop exercising appropriate self-defense, or if it was racially driven. But I do know that race does sometimes drive people to fear. That it's possible this was a racially driven incident. And that we'll never have a trial to determine that.
The details of Eric Garner's case are much more clear. None of the ambiguities of Michael Brown's death existed. To me that is a clear-cut case of racism and police going way too far. And yet, no indictment there either.
But here's why I still have hope. I've never heard as much attention given to this issue as I have since Trayvon Martin's death. And while the toll continues to rise of non-prosecuted homicides of black people, I believe our country is poised to change. I've never seen this many people hungry for change, ready to be part of the change. These tragic deaths are losses that can never be justified, but I want them to at least not be in vain. I want them to be the catalyst for change.
I don't know what exactly that looks like. But I have hope that with all the attention people are giving, now more than ever we can change the system that the word "broken" doesn't even begin to describe.
There's still so much I don't know. I think that people in a privileged class are always hesitant to believe they are privileged, because they don't experience the injustice for themselves. And my limited witnessing of injustice doesn't give me the full picture. But I'm hoping that with hashtags like #crimingwhilewhite and #alivewhileblack, the awareness level will rise to a point where things change. Things HAVE to change. #blacklivesmatter
