I marched tonight because as a small white female, my parents never had to warn me about how to act around police so that the people meant to protect me would actually protect me.
I continued marching tonight because, when confronted with a line of police clearly there to stop our progress, my first thought was, “certainly they wouldn’t arrest or attack me,” and even though I’ve known about my privilege for about a year now, it wasn’t until that thought popped into my head that the full weight of it smacked me right across the face.
I marched tonight and choked up as I thought about a girl in my lit class last year talking about her and her parents’ fear of her brother being in danger if he walked alone at night wearing a hoodie, because even though he is a student and I’m told kind and wicked smart, all a stranger might see meeting him in the street is the dark color of his skin.
People can debate the facts of some of these crimes until the cows come home, but it is absolutely undeniable that racism is still alive and well in this country. White people know it, I think, somewhere deep down. People of color certainly know it. And that needs to end. And the more we let these issues go quietly without annoying, disruptive, demanding, loud action, the longer they survive.
That’s why I marched tonight.
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