Thoughts on May Day, 2015

This is the first photo I found when I googled my old elementary school.  It illustrates the school's goals perfectly (and is a pretty good stand in for my class photos, which are probably in a box in my parents' basement). 

The Day after May Day, 2015

Yesterday morning, I sat in a parking lot listening to every word of Baltimore's chief prosecutor Marilyn Mosby's  press conference while I should have been grocery shopping.
     

At dinner we had a heated conversation about Freddie Gray, with one mad teenage boy and some kids very confused about the legal system and murder charges.  

At night, the older two kids and I saw my cousins in Hairspray, a plot I knew nothing about as the curtain came up.  Turns out, it is largely about race relations and desegregation in the Baltimore of 1962.   Just before intermission the 'TV Anchor' character listed riots and unrest in Baltimore with thirty teenagers frozen in mock-brawl on stage.  He ended with April 2015.  Who would have thought we'd be here now?  

A year or two ago, our church started a focus on racial justice and white privilege.  I was not having it.  I had covered that topic, thoroughly and completely.  One of the top goals of my elementary school education was to ensure that we were not racist.  And I feel that they succeeded.  Growling up I had friends who were Native American, Filipino, Japanese, African and Chinese.  We learned about the civil rights movement, making posters of Gandhi, King and Rosa Parks.  They did the brown eyes blue eyes experiment on us.  I was not going to listen to sermons about how I was racist without even knowing it.  Yes, I knew there were income disparities.  Yes, I knew the unemployment rates were unequal, that education score weren't the same, but there was progress.   We were on the right track.  I thought.  But it turns out I live in my own little bubble.  We all live in our own little bubbles--whether those are bubbles of racial equality or disparity, liberal, libertarian, or conservative beliefs.  We've all been surrounding ourselves with people who think like us.  (And often look like us too).  

The police brutality, and flat out killing, of African American men in the last year or so had been a real wake-up call.  Something's really wrong.  Whether or not I've counteracted prejudice in myself, whether or not I see racism in my life, there is a real problem out there that needs to be addressed.  

White privilege has really been brought into sharp focus by these events.  I remember President Obama talking about how Trayvon Martin looked just like his son would have looked, if he had had a boy.  Now that I have a 5'11'' thirteen year old boy the size of a man, I feel how protected he is by being white.  He can wear a hoodie any day of the week (and often does).  He can stand around on the street corner talking with friends.  This does not alarm anybody.  Change just one thing--his skin color--and I would be terrified for his safety right now.  But because of our extremely pale skin, I can choose whether or not I think of this as my problem.  

The distance--Florida, New York, Baltimore, Ferguson MO, has also felt like an opportunity for inaction.  'That's not happening here.' I tell myself quietly.  But when the incidents are so widespread, I can not longer take much comfort in the fact that none of them have happened in my state.  They are happening all over my country.  

So what should we do?  I really don't know.  I could go to my overwhelmingly white church to see what their thoughts are on the matter.  I probably will.  Tomorrow is Sunday, after all.