Trying to survive-while-black or brown or.....POC

Yes, this will be an uncomfortable read for some.  That's okay because being uncomfortable is not the same as being dead, or mourning the loss of a child, or trying to survive another day. Seek to understand where the rage in coming from (no, I do not condone riots or anything that perpetrates violence or hatred) but I do understand that the frustration has been building forever.  Consider this...

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. […] in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. […] (America) it has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. […] Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

Remember MLK, Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail was written to a white audience. There is so much we, white people - privileged people based on the color of our skin, have no way of understanding. Since the beginning of our American history, people of color (Native Americans first but quickly followed by Africans, and this is just at the cusp of our history) have been oppressed and always it was glossed over in textbooks as a "sign of the times." And yes, I do know that Irish people were oppressed, but let's be honest and acknowledge that their oppression in America was short-lived in comparison to people of color, since it's now been over 400 years.

Yes, there is less racism now, but it still exists and person after person is dying because of it. Or maybe they are not dying, maybe they are incarcerated, expelled from school, feared for simply being in a neighborhood or store, and the list goes on. Families have to tell their sons how to behave so they can survive a traffic stop - something I never thought to worry about for my sons. The knee-jerk reaction of so many of my well-meaning friends is that "those" people were obviously doing something wrong or that it's only a few instances of "bad" cops (and yes, Blue Lives Matter, but that isn't the point, right now), but it keeps on happening around our nation. Each incident that gets reported is just the tip of the iceberg of what is a daily reality for many. I'm not speaking ONLY of incidents reported in the news but from my friends' realities.

My heart breaks, not only for those lost souls, but for loved ones, my friends and their children, and for many of my students, current and past, who are living the reality of living in America trying to survive-while-black or brown or POC (person of color).