In reality, when I am fighting with the Justice4All program, I am fighting for myself.
I am fighting for my right to not be complicit in policies that work in my favor but that threaten my peers of color. I am fighting against a system that has invisibly shaped much of my life – that has planted in me fear, ignorance, and disconnection; that has denied me the ability to tell the difference between a threat and a stereotype; that has structured my life in such a way that I possess a radically unfair share of resources and privilege while others are locked up and locked out. I have been taught my whole life that people of color, especially black men, are criminals. I am fed this information through the media, where I consume images of black men labeled as thugs; I learn this when, from the back of the car, I hear the lock click as my white family travels through a black neighborhood; and I am supposed to understand that because more black men are locked away, it means that more black men break the law. But from my own experience, I know this isn’t true. Instead, I know that there is a double standard that benefits white people by constantly giving them the benefit of the doubt, and punishes black people by constantly denying their innocence.
Though I didn’t know it then, at age 17 I witnessed the difference between the white law and the black law. Every weekend, I would engage in illegal activities – often in the suburbs of Minneapolis, rich friends of mine would throw late night, loud parties, always featuring alcohol, that in the summertime would spread out onto the lawns and (no doubt) disrupt the neighbors. Not one of these parties was busted, and none of us were ever arrested for our criminal activities. I don’t think the prospect of being caught by the police ever crossed our minds. Then, a few white friends and I visited the house of a black classmate (at a private school, we didn’t have many), who I will refer to as Michael. This young man, an athlete and an only child, threw a sober party at his mom’s house and we were invited to stop by. The guests were few and as far as I could tell stayed inside. I sat and chatted for a while, but we left before an hour had passed. As we circled the block, passing his house one last time before heading home, I witnessed some of my classmates friends sitting on the sidewalk, next to a police car, apparently being questioned for their participation in a small, sober party. I didn’t stop at the time. I didn’t realize why that would be important.
Looking back on that memory, I realize why our parties were treated so differently; why we were treated so differently. We were all just teenagers. But, because there was a white law and a black law, the police – the entire criminal justice system – viewed our activities differently. White parties were treated with impunity, with exception, while black parties were constantly under scrutiny. In a broader context, this double standard means that even as white and black people break the law at roughly equivalent rates (actually, Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crowe points out that white people break the law more often), white people’s illicit activities are not criminalized (see this project: http://www.weareallcriminals.com/).
By participating in this system, white people like myself steep ourselves in a culture of entitlement, exceptionalism and white supremacy; we re-inscribe century old racial hierarchies, stratifying our society and impeding our ability to relate across differences. This dynamic of discriminatory treatment goes on because of unregulated policy, but working with the Justice4All program, I can claim the power to stop it. Changing the criminal justice system -this is the civil rights issue of our time.
As Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian-American author, writes, “I had a safe frivolous life while those I loved knew the hell of war” and “I finally understood why I felt ashamed to sit in my father’s Cadillac… the difference between social classes” (Persepolis). I relate to Satrapi in that my pain is the pain of the dominant – those who occupy too many resources and too much privilege. This pain that I feel inextricably links me to the (primarily) black and brown people who are robbed of the right to life, to economic vitality, to civic participation – rights that the criminal justice system is central in taking away. I fight to change these systems because I understand what they’re up to, I see the oppression – and I want my humanity back.
Join the Justice4All Program fighting for the humanity and civil rights of people of color at 2nd Chance Coalition’s– 2nd Chance Day on the Hill. We will be at the Capitol Rotunda, March 12th at 2pm.
