I didn't vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. While democrats were taking hits off of hope and getting high on the promise of change, I was steeped in patriotism for a prisoner of war — soaking in red, white and blue pride that ran to the bone. I voted for John McCain who fought and suffered for this country. After all, he wasn’t a native Kenyan with allegiance to the Muslims who attacked this nation not even a decade earlier … right? These were the things I heard implied by the talk radio hosts on air. Where was his birth certificate to prove he was qualified?  There is a reason the constitution requires you to be a natural born citizen to serve as president. These were questions that concerned following the framework of the constitution. I didn't vote against Obama because of his race. I voted against him because he didn't share the same values for society that I did. If Condoleezza Rice would have run for president, I would have had no qualms selecting her name on my ballot. My choice in voting had nothing to do with race. Slavery and racism were something this country had faced long ago. Sure, there were some people on the fringes who still held racist views, but they no longer held power in society.

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       The few times I had witnessed racism, I had spoken up. Like the time when I was 15, heading to work on the metro bus. I was sitting on the bench seat toward the front of the bus that faces the aisle, right behind the driver. On the bench facing me sat an older white woman. The bus stopped and a black woman got on, paid her fare, and sat down on the side that the older white woman was sitting on, leaving plenty of space between them. As soon as the black woman sat down, the white woman looked at her with such contempt and hatred, and then hurriedly moved to a seat farther back in the bus. I was shocked and appalled; I had never seen anyone act like this. The actions of the white woman left the black woman with a look of pain and despair on her face. I asked the white woman what her problem was and called her a racist. That to me was what a racist was. That was not me. But that didn’t stop people from telling me that I was racist because of my vote. Especially the white progressive liberals in the Seattle area who were voting for Obama.

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       I proudly displayed a pink McCain-Palin bumper sticker on the back window of my car and tuned into conservative talk radio shows — parroting the same talking points — on my way to work. I was 24 years old, and while my parents were conservative, and had worked for conservative talk radio stations for most of my life, this election was the first time I really started paying attention to politics. Most of my opinions were extensions of my parents’ views — their word was gospel. The "news" I consumed was mostly talk radio, with a mix of articles from Fox News. I trusted the "fair and balanced" slogan that I had heard repeated again and again over the years by Fox. My parents — and every talking head they listened to — had told me how other news outlets were bias, and I didn’t question it. Conservatives had righteousness on their side with many of them being religious. That came with a presumption of honesty. However, some of my views were very progressive due to lived experiences — but I hadn’t really taken politics seriously until that election.

 

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       But how did I get here? Let’s start at the beginning. I entered the world in the summer of 1984, just 15 months after my brother. I was born to a conservative Christian family in the Pacific Northwest. My parents were often too busy for me between both of them working full time and my brother demanding a lot of attention. I learned that my quietness and obedience was a virtue. I was the good girl. And I was subjected to a lot of sibling abuse, which made me very shy, docile and nervous. My elementary years were spent at Southgate Elementary in Parkland, Washington, a suburb of Tacoma. This area was pretty solidly low-income. Although I grew up in a low-income neighborhood, the nearby military base created a great deal of turnover in population, and a lot of whites. I didn’t have many interactions with African Americans beyond the small group that congregated together at the back of the school bus, and the occasional interaction in class or on the playground with the few that attended the school. My main socialization was done during church events, in a church that was almost exclusively white. We had church sports teams, cheerleading, picnics, vacations. Race was a non-issue in my life – it wasn’t talked about because it generally wasn’t anywhere in sight. But when I did have interactions with African Americans, I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to relate to them. But I was extremely anxious, so I felt uncomfortable around most people regardless of their race.

 

       While growing up, I had learned that there was a horrible point in time when black people were slaves and then discriminated against after that as well. I had also learned — probably in school, and definitely from my parents — that this was a long time ago and all that had changed. According to my parents, the problems that African Americans face now are largely caused by their own destructive behavior. They were to blame because they chose to commit crimes. They were violent. They were angry. They were to blame because they wore baggy clothes. African Americans who dress differently are treated differently, it’s not about race, it’s about them dressing unpresentable. When my white brother listened to rap music or dressed “like a thug,” my dad was sure to mention the horrible messages in the music or that black people wear baggy pants because of prison. Black people were to blame for their problems because they didn’t work hard enough and expected to be promoted without working for it. When they weren’t promoted, they called it racism, but it was really due to their lack of initiative.

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       Affirmative action had made African Americans lazy and entitled. My dad used to tell a story of when he was in his twenties or so, during the time of affirmative action in Washington State. He would tell about an African American who had recently been hired. He had been hired because the radio station needed a person of color on staff due to the law, not because of his qualifications. In fact, others who had been more qualified had been turned down in order to hire him. This man, according to my father, was not a very good worker. He was always complaining about not getting breaks, when no one in radio gets breaks. That’s how radio works, you eat between pushing buttons and turning on mics. He expected special treatment because of his race, and said he was being discriminated against if he didn’t get it. Not too long after he was hired, he applied for a better paying position that had just opened up. He didn’t get it. Then he complained that he didn’t get the job due to his race. My dad would then tell you about the fact that it had nothing to do with his race. The reason he had a job there at all – despite being underqualified – was because he was black.

 

       Obviously, people should be hired due to their qualifications. Right? And this made a lot of sense to me. Why should more qualified people be passed up? Especially when racism was old news and black people now have just as many opportunities as everyone else. Like Frederick Douglass’ claims of being a “self-made man” African Americans should work for it and make themselves better. This country is the land of opportunity, and if you just work hard enough, you can succeed in whatever endeavor you choose. You can come from poverty and become wealthy if you try hard enough. Some black people have done it, any one of them could if they tried. That is the promise of the American Dream.

 

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       When I started middle school, we moved to Auburn, Washington. This is the town my father was born and raised in. It was a city where elderly white couples retired together, and young white kids got into trouble — another not-so-diverse corner of Washington State in the mid 1990s. This was also around the time that the church I grew up in splintered due to a change in doctrine, and many small groups were formed — including one that my dad would soon become the leader of. When I got to my high school years, I was finally breaking out of my shell a bit and making friends. I had been homeschooled since seventh grade because of a learning disability that the school said they “couldn’t do anything about.” But in ninth grade I went to Auburn High School for a couple of elective classes. The friend group I made was into “extracurricular activities.” There were parties, drinking and weed smoking. It was the first time I felt the sense of autonomy. The first time I saw a glimpse of normalcy. The first time I didn’t feel like an outcast. However, I didn’t feel like I could assert my independence with my religious parents who were a paradoxical combination of controlling/domineering and unavailable/distant. My mom’s form of discipline was to shame me and my brother into compliance. My dad used corporal punishment when we were younger. When we got older, he generally resorted to grounding us. The lack of freedom and disapproval led us to not tell them about a lot of things. We snuck out a lot. I didn’t feel like I could ask for the independence I desired. This was something I had learned from my brother; there wasn’t much point in asking. Around this time, my parents were letting some people from their congregation who had come from another state stay with us while they looked for a place. I was embarrassing my parents. I remember the people staying with us wanting to “lay hands” on me and pray for the “demon” in me to leave. At one point my dad screwed my window shut and took my bedroom door off the hinges. But this rebellious phase didn’t last long.

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       After a year or so of rebellion, I got my GED and went to beauty school. I graduated from beauty school when I was 17 and work at a haircutting salon in Federal Way for a year, before making plans — spurred on by a push from my dad — to open my own salon in Auburn. My dad was very involved in this endeavor. In hindsight, I wasn’t ready. Between my lack of experience and my dad’s push for me to do things the way he pictured it — instead of making it my dream — I unconsciously self-destructed. My brother, who had also gone through a rebellious time when I did a few years earlier, had not stopped. In fact, he had found his way into the dark part of Auburn — the meth scene. Just before I turned 19, I started dating one of my brother’s friends. Partly because I was scared to open my own salon, but also because I had always been seeking my brother’s approval, and I could tell he looked up to this friend. His friend had a meth problem. After my attempts to get him to get sober failed, instead of breaking it off, I eventually started using too, abandoning my business aspirations just after signing a lease. My father, who had co-signed, was able to back out of it. This part of my life is important to understand because those progressive views I talked about earlier, they were created largely due to these experiences.

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       I used for about a year, got pregnant, went to treatment, had a baby girl, and went on to raise my daughter as a single mother. But during that year of drug use, I met the underbelly of society. I saw mothers and fathers sharing meth pipes with their children and pregnant women using. I saw a drunk throw everything his son owned into the dumpster while on a bender, and then beg for him to come home to take care of him while he was sober. I saw people getting out of prison and trying to get their lives together only to find out once again, it is too difficult to survive as a productive member of society with a felony. I saw women who had been physically or sexually abused turn to drugs because it was easier to feel numb then to face the trauma. I saw so many people who were raised into that way of living, it’s all they knew, what chance were they given to live any differently? Despite the misgivings of a low-income family, the controlling upbringing, and the sibling abuse, I had two parents who tried their best. They may not have been perfect, but they did their best with the skills they were taught. They gave me a life most of the people I met would probably envy. After I ended the relationship with my brother’s friend, the drugs were not hard for me to walk away from. I knew a different way. I wouldn’t be bombarded by drug addicts if I went to visit my family. Most of these people were. What hope did they have?

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       I saw the problems in the justice system. I heard the claims of “rehabilitation,” and realized it was an empty promise. This country stopped trying to rehabilitate long ago, if they ever really did. The only thing the system was doing now was perpetuating the problem. The definitions of rehabilitation are: “the action of restoring someone to health or normal life through training and therapy after imprisonment, addiction, or illness;” “the action of restoring someone to former privileges or reputation after a period of disfavor;” and “the action of restoring something that has been damaged to its former condition.” How could the justice system even imply rehabilitation had anything to do with it? Prisons were set up to hide the part of society people didn’t understand or want to look at. They hid the people who slipped through the cracks and never learned a better way. The justice system was tarnishing the reputation of those that passed through its gates and not restoring them to good standing. In order to fix the problem, they needed to teach these people a different way. To make it easier for them to fit into society, and not harder. These people needed counseling. They needed an education. They needed to be able to walk into a job interview and not have to tell their employer they were a felon only to be turned down because of it after serving their time. I saw the problem being fixed in a holistic manner. To stop recidivism, they had to cure the illness, not treat the symptoms.

 

       But to me, the problems with the justice system were not based in race. It transcended race. It was class based. It was trauma based. The portion of the underbelly of society that I had become familiar with was mostly white. This problem did not discriminate. For a moment in my life, I saw myself playing a role in fixing this problem. I started college to get my chemical dependency certificate from highline community college at the beginning of 2006. I saw myself working from within the system and maybe going on to work within government to try to fix a flawed system. This dream was short-lived. Not long after I started college, I became pregnant again. The father was a friend I had kept in contact with through his prison sentence. He got out of prison with high hopes of change. I became pregnant shortly after. When the exhaustion of pregnancy kicked in, I no longer had the strength to continue my studies. I married my second child’s father, and he went to prison once again shortly after.

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       After being forced back into being a “single mother” (despite being married), I started working overtime at a valet parking lot by the airport. This was around the time of the 2008 election. I would drive my kids to daycare and continue on to work each morning, listening to conservative talk radio programs on the way. I still bought into the views of the conservative party, after all, both parties had played equal parts in creating and exacerbating the criminal justice problem. I thought I understood the conservative party, and I bought into the righteousness of the party. I saw the liberal party as angry, unreasonable and dishonest. What they said didn’t make sense and was based on feelings and not facts. Things were black and white, right or wrong, but liberals always wanted to make things unequal. They wanted to take from hard working Americans and give to their lazy and intitled base. They wanted to spend, spend, spend and not care about the consequences. They were socialists and communists, which I may not have had a strong grasp on what that was, but I had heard my whole life how bad it was. They wanted to make the country less safe by downsizing the military. And all the other lines I heard repeated on talk radio. That, to me, did not seem like a very reasonable way to run a country. John McCain was a war hero. After 9/11 the conservative party, me included, became very supportive of the military. Like many conservatives, I thought we needed the military to keep our country safe. We have been able to maintain safety in our country because of the strict policies put in place after 9/11. When liberals are in power, they make us less safe. During this time of my life, I was rebuilding myself. I was creating a new life, figuring out how to be an adult with two young kids. And this new adult was trying to become a responsible member of society. I was doing responsible adult things, including paying attention to politics. So, I voted for John McCain. I have different views on politics today. Today, I have come to see a lot of problems in both parties. I see the corruptness of capitalism, and the lobbyists who buy votes. I see the oligarchic system that puts the top one percent far above the masses who are just barely scraping by. Neither side has clean hands. But which is the lesser of two evils?

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***

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       During this next section I will explain the next phase of my life. A phase of my life that has pushed me to look deeper than surface words. To try to understand what is hidden from view. Because all too often, the words that are used hold so much more weight below the surface. Something that I was too ignorant to understand for a lot of my life.

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       For the three years my husband was in prison, my kids and I drove 45 minutes and took a half hour ferry ride to visit him every Saturday. My life was in a holding pattern. I spent what time I could with my children, but the daycare seemed to be raising them more than I was at times. I was looking forward to when I could spend more time with them. My husband was released from prison in 2011. I cut down on work and spend more time with my children for a little bit. Then my husband’s drinking started, and the mental abuse I had seen glimpses of throughout our relationship drastically worsened. The alcoholism spiraled into drug use, and physical abuse. In 2012 I was working full time again and supporting us all. My husband’s substance abuse and domestic violence affected my work. I was mentally torn down. I was in a state of constant turmoil. I would get to work late because my husband didn’t get home in time for me to leave for work. By the end of 2012 I lost my job and my house. At the end of December, in a state of despair, I left my children with my parents. By the end of January 2013, I was homeless with my husband and staying couch to couch in houses filled with drugs. Not prepared to give up and walk away from my husband — not prepared to accept the fact that I would have to face the world alone, as a single parent once again — I relapsed with him. For the next eight months I used drugs to keep up with him, to stay by his side — which never worked. But after so many black eyes and bloody noses, so many other women, so much degradation, by September I was finally ready to walk away. Or more accurately, I was finally walking away from someone who had walked away from me long ago.

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       A friend of a friend named Blake helped me leave. One night, he brought me to pick up my stuff from the place my husband and I had been crashing at. Or what was left of it after my husband had let other people pick through it while I was gone. I stayed at a friend’s house for a few days, then I went with Blake again. He was going to bring me to my parents’ house — to my children. He stopped in a cul-de-sac to look for a vehicle that he could get money out of for gas. I tried to convince him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. He told me to sit in the driver’s seat and if I saw anyone, to rev the engine and he would get in the car, and I would drive away. As he was in the driver’s seat of a nearby pickup truck, rifling through the interior, I saw someone approaching. It was like a scene from a movie. A crouched figure was running through the shadows. I thought it was a police officer. I revved the engine. Blake didn’t come. I revved it again. When he did finally step out of the pickup, a man in his late 20s or early 30s in plain clothes approached him with a gun drawn. It was obvious this man had weapons training. He told Blake to lay down on the ground. Blake did. The man was yelling that the police were on their way and to stay on the ground. I think at that point Blake realized that the man wasn’t a cop. He started calmly telling the man that he hadn’t taken anything. He calmly repeated, “I didn’t take anything. I’m going to get up, walk to the car, and we’re going to just drive away. I don’t have anything from your truck.” He slowly got up. The man fired a few rounds into the cement by Blake’s feet. Blake repeated calmly that he was just going to walk to the car, and we would just leave. He walked slowly to the passenger side of the car and got in. As Blake was getting into the car, a woman was approaching from the house the man had come from. When she realized what was happening, she started trying to open my door and then told the man to “shoot out the tires.” Blake told me “just go.” I slowly put my foot on the accelerator. The man started shooting at the car. He was shooting at the tires and shooting at the hood. As I heard the sound of shredding metal near my feet, I pulled my feet off the petals and curled up as much as I could. It felt like forever, but I’m sure it was only seconds. And then silence.

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       When I looked up, I saw Blake’s door open and him not in the car. Even in shock I knew he had been shot. I barely remember exiting the car. I don’t remember stepping out of the car. I don’t remember looking around toward the direction the shooter was. I don’t remember anything besides seeing several bullet holes in a cluster pattern in the windshield as I was walking around the car and then being at Blake’s side on the other side of the car. I bent down to check him in the dark. As my hands felt his body, my fingers grasped hard metal. They curled around a gun. Blake had a license to carry and his gun was laying on his chest. I would later find out he had fired two rounds. I picked up the gun and set in inside the car on the floorboard and closed the passenger side door. I remember doing this, even in complete shock. And then I screamed for help. The woman who had tried to open my door and then yelled to shoot out the tires was the one to approach. I begged her to help me. At first, she appeared to not want to. I know I looked desperate. I had no idea how to do CPR. She finally helped — she pumped his chest while I breathed into his lungs. As we were performing CPR, the man that shot him walked up and said calmly and callously “Just stop, just stop.” He shined a flashlight in Blake’s eyes and said, “look, he’s dead, just stop.” Those words and that image will forever be seared into my brain. Blake’s eyes were open, they looked foggy. His jaw was slack. The woman gave up not too long after, despite my pleas for her to continue. The first police officer showed up on scene just moments later. I begged for him to help Blake. I was led away, cuffed and placed in the back of a cop car. They did not continue CPR. I found out later Blake was not dead when the man shined a flashlight in his eyes. According to the medic report, when they checked his vitals, he still had a thready pulse. But Blake did not survive. This part of my life is important to understand because of what happened next.

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       In the early morning, I was ushered into a room where two detectives sat. They asked me to give a statement. I asked if Blake had survived, fearing I already knew the answer. They told me he hadn’t. They said that’s why it was so important for me to tell them what happened because this was now a death investigation. I told them everything between sobs. After my statement, I was taken to the King County Jail in Seattle Washington. There I spent the first couple of days in a suicide watch cell because I was hysterical when I got there. In the cell I was in complete isolation, with no shower, and no way to really wash Blake’s blood from my body. There was a green rubber mat on the floor, and I was put in a suicide smock, made of thick material designed so that the inmate can’t use it to harm themselves. It doubles as clothing and a blanket for sleeping. The day that I went before the judge for the first time, still unshowered, I saw my lawyer just before. She explained to me that this case was considered a “high-profile” case. The media had reported on it. The judge and prosecutor were going to be harsh for fear that the media would have a heyday if they weren’t. There was a death. Was the blame for that death on me?

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       I was arraigned on the charge of possession of stolen property for the car that we were driving, apparently stolen. My bail was set high considering the charge and my lack of a lengthy criminal record – $25,000, bondable for $2,500. During the first couple of weeks of my incarceration I came to realize how much the criminal justice system, media, and public opinion play on each other. The shooting was a blurb in the headlines for the first day and then received no coverage. But the justice system continued to play politics as if the world were watching. My lawyer tried to get me into drug court – a program that allows individuals who have committed crimes due to drug abuse to attend treatment and jump through hoops, at the end of which the charges would be dropped. They denied me drug court because a death had happened during the incident, despite the fact the death was due to the actions of a stranger. I spent the next three months in jail – with my lawyer constantly petitioning for a lower bail and the judge denying her petitions – before my parents could scrape together enough money to pay a bail bondsman to get me out. I was lucky to have family to help. The media coverage that was given on that first day hailed the ex-marine who had shot Blake a “hero.” The woman who had told the ex-marine to shoot the tires it turns out was his aunt. The man did not speak with the media, but the aunt did. Her story was inconsistent. And by the next day, the media had moved on to other things. While I was behind bars, I asked my mom to print me out news stories on the incident and send them to me. One of the stories was written by a journalist who had called my mom to ask for a comment. All my mom told her was that I had called her from jail and said, “my friend had been killed.” She did not comment further. The journalist’s story portrayed me in the worst light. She said that “family members called her a long-time drug addict.” This is something that I could never picture anyone in my family saying. This wasn’t me. I had used drugs for one year in my late teens and had been clean and sober for over eight years before relapsing for eight months when my life fell apart due to abuse. My mom called this journalist furious after reading the article, asking who exactly her “source” is because they weren’t her, and they weren’t true. The journalist told her she “could not reveal her sources” and did not want to talk any further. But the comments on the news stories haunted me even more. Commenters said Blake “got what he deserved,” the shooter was “a hero,” and I “should have died too.”

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       After I was bailed out, my lawyer let me read through the case discovery in the halls of the courthouse before one of my court dates. The discovery contains everyone’s statements and all police reports. The statements of the shooter and his aunt didn’t match up. I read the transcript of a police officer telling the aunt to not worry, they could come back the next day and give her time to “think about her statement.” This, to me, sure sounded like they gave her an opportunity to get her story straight before she admitted to anything. Despite the inconsistency in statements, and the clear evidence that this man had emptied a clip to a 9 mm handgun (they found 16 9 mm shell casings at the scene), most of which were shot before any threat to life, the man who shot Blake was never charged. Not even with reckless discharge of a firearm. Blake had drawn his gun in that last second before the shooter put three bullets in his chest. And it appears Blake fired two rounds. In actuality, I’m lucky those two bullets didn’t hit anyone, because I would have been charged for their injury or death if they had. I can’t tell you what was going through Blake’s mind in those last few seconds when he decided to pull his gun. I can’t say what he heard. I can’t say if he feared those bullets that I heard ripping through the hood would hit us, like I was afraid. I can’t say if he was trying to protect me or himself. I can’t say if when I pulled my feet off the peddles and scrunched down, if he thought I had hunched over because I had been shot. I can’t say. But I can tell you that the shooter, and apparently the justice system, the media, and many members of the public believed that the actions taken by the shooter were justified.

 

       Over the next several months after I was bailed out of jail, I worked on bettering my life. I applied for Medicaid and went to treatment. I got into counseling and was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I filed for divorce. All these things were instrumental in how my case turned out. I was finally offered a deal. Plead guilty to two counts of car prowling, one for the car we were in, and the other for the shooter’s truck – gross misdemeanors – and I wouldn’t serve any more time. The second charge for the shooter’s truck was politics, my lawyer said. A way for prosecution to put the blame of the shooting on me, in a way. But I wouldn’t be a felon. I took the deal — and after the allotted time was able to have the charges vacated.

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***

 

       I remember the pain I felt when I read the news reports after Michael Brown was shot. Reading the news had become a personal hobby of mine since I became aware of how flawed it all was. The politics of it all. I felt for this young man ... I hurt for his family. I remember scrolling through the comments of news articles and reading people say that he deserved to die. How can people be so cruel? How can our society be so okay with deadly force? A young man lost his life. He did not have the opportunity to turn his life around. His family was mourning him, and many people were saying he deserved what he got. I started to see the oppression. There was a preconceived notion that this black man — like so many other black people — was a criminal and deserved to be dealt with harshly. Just like the ex-marine who shot Blake, the police officer was viewed as a hero who could do no wrong in so many people’s eyes. Blake was white, but was committing a crime, so was obviously the only one to blame. I came to realize I had been wrong. The justice system did discriminate. Public opinion discriminates. The media discriminates. Society has preconceived notions that people in the position of power are to be trusted blindly. An individual that commits a crime, falls in the lower status in society or on the fringes, is colored, is poor, that individual is not to be trusted. That person deserves what they get.

 

       With each new police shooting my heart ached. I hyperventilated. I read the stories and got flashbacks. I knew their death would never really be treated justly. Everything I had been told growing up was wrong. Those preconceived notions about the way someone dresses or talks making them “unpresentable” was wrong. The idea that racism was old news was wrong. Taking one experience with one black person during affirmative action and relating it to every black person was wrong. Even saying that that one black person wasn’t being discriminated against was wrong. Sometimes, something happens that lifts a veil from your eyes that you didn’t realize was there. You see things you never saw before. You admit things you had been hiding from yourself. I admitted to myself that I had preconceived ideas about certain people because of a lifelong conditioning I had received. I saw black people differently. I love my parents. They are good people. They just have the same veil over their eyes that they put over mine long ago. They don’t understand that just because you accept the few black people who conform and dress and talk like you doesn’t mean that you aren’t racist. They don’t understand. I didn’t understand.

 

       I started attending Highline Community College in January 2015 to study journalism. After graduating from Highline, I went onto the University of Washington, double majoring in journalism and political science. I went into college with the idea that I knew nothing about politics. I knew nothing about racism. I knew I had learned to be biased against individuals who were not like me. I knew once upon a time I would have thought the police officer who shot Michael Brown had every right to do so. I knew that most of the white population had never experienced something that would lead them to believe anything different or give them a different perspective from the ones they had been conditioned to see. I have a different perspective now. I want to be someone who will look at a story from every angle. I want to fight to tell the truth, and not just what public opinion wants me to say. I worked on the school newspaper, The Thunderword, for two years, learning how to write journalism stories. I took political science classes, trying to understand politics better. I have worked to see the political world from an unbiased perspective. If I had been so wrong, what was right? My political science professors, while identifying as liberal, have not blindly believed in liberal candidates. They’ve seen the flaws in the candidates, in the parties. This is what I wanted to understand. Things were not as black and white as I believed they were when I voted for McCain. Feelings and emotions do play a part in things and should be considered. It was not a matter of, “this person earned a degree in a land of ‘equal opportunity,’ so they deserve the job above someone of color,” or “that person was committing a crime, so the police officer had every right to shoot.” Nothing is black and white.​ The questions about Obama’s birth certificate, while framed as concerns about upholding the constitution, that was racist. The “questions” like that that the right-wing hosts ask plant seeds in their listeners minds that they believe, even though it is completely false. They are dangerous dog whistles.

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       I have gained a better understanding of systemic racism and systems of oppression. Although I still have much to learn. I was ignorant before, and in my ignorance, I thought I was right. I thought racism was black-and-white, you either where or you weren’t. I did not see it on a continuum. I didn’t see the assumptions of a person’s character based on their race, their appearances, their failures. I didn’t see it because I had never lived it. I had never gotten close enough to be able to relate to it. That is not to say that people can’t understand something without personal experience. People can learn to relate without these experiences, but it takes wanting to. It takes admitting there is a problem. Mankind has the ability to empathize. I might never fully understand how a person of color feels, but I can try to understand how to fix the problem.

 

​       I can quell my ignorance by education. I can study the African American culture, understanding that their music, their clothing, their slang doesn’t make them less then. It doesn’t make them unpresentable. But people have a tendency to believe that if someone isn’t like them, then there is something wrong with them. “Those black people that dress like me, they’re ok because they don’t make me quite so nervous. I can relate to them, they’re not thugs.” This is ignorance. The culture I grew up in everyone around me was white and racism was non-existent. We avoided it. We were able to believe that racism didn’t exist because we locked ourselves in our white corners of the world and said the problem isn’t race, it’s that blacks aren’t trying to be more like us. People of color have experienced the same small, and big, discriminating circumstances time and time again. Many white people don’t realize what they’re doing. A white person’s intention doesn’t matter. We must realize that we don’t know anything at times. This is sometimes the only way to learn how we are hurting each other.