“When Martin Luther King Day comes around, I think that people celebrate the holiday because everything is half-off. When [my teacher] told me about her student that got killed from gun violence, I told myself that I still don’t think that us black people are free. For instance, I thought of this when the cop choked this guy and he said, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and he continued until he died. That cop still didn’t go to jail.”
This year a group of fifth graders in New Orleans read an essay I wrote in The New York Times titled, “What, to the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?” and sent me a raft of emails sharing their experiences and perceptions of racism, including the one above. It’s unfair that any 10-year-old should be burdened with the knowledge that a police officer can choke the life out of a black man in front of the world yet not face trial. What does it say about our democracy that the justice system has twisted itself into a form of hypocrisy that is obvious even to a middle-schooler?
Yet there seemed to be an opportunity for these students to think that a bright future awaited them:
“When I grow up I want to be a professor just like you. I want to do chemistry. I really liked your article because you seem like one of the smartest professors in the world. I learned a lot from your article.”
Such sentiments were not uncommon in the letters I received. These students’ view of me was not unlike my own wonderment at the depiction of elite higher education in movies I watched as a child. When I received my acceptance letter for graduate study at MIT, my only reference was Good Will Hunting, and I wondered if my experience would look like Matt Damon’s.
One student said that she expected to go to Yale in 2023. But for most young black students, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton might as well be located on another continent. Even messages expressing a note of inspiration at my own position were tinged with tragic awareness.
“Congratulations on going to Yale and being a black professor. That is amazing. It must have taken hard work to get to that place where you’re at! But just remember one thing: don’t die yet, ok?”
That email completely unsettled me. In a couple of sentences, this young girl acknowledges what she thinks it must take (thus that it is possible) to be black and a Yale professor but also what she thinks my chances are of meeting my end prematurely: “don’t die yet, ok?” Her request possesses the playful tone of a child’s innocence but is nonetheless weighed down with the premature awareness that not all Americans have the same life chances.
What should we say to this young girl as she matures and realizes that making plans for life means something different for her and maybe her children than it does for white children?
It’s inappropriate to say, “Everything will be OK.” Any attempt at consolation wouldn’t be fair. Our young black children have run ahead of our ability to explain things to them in due time. To explain how it is that people can come to hate one another for things that only superficially look like reasons. To explain that “democracy” and “justice” are not synonyms. To explain that there is rarely justice when it comes to black mortality.
Instead young black children are learning that when some people are given more voting power, they are able to put in place systems of repression that can, more than 50 years after Martin had a dream, outlast systems of public hatred, driving oppression underground and out of sight — until a cop chokes the life out of a man and gets away with it. What reasonable person growing up under such circumstances could be expected to believe that everyone’s dream is created equally?
The easy position to adopt is that there is no hope. This has become a fairly popular position among some black writers. Maybe they’re correct. I have at times felt that hope is irrational. Yet I have faith in the power of words and their potential to persuade. My essay compelled those students to share not only their troubling observations but also their hope in humanity:
“Two years ago I went to a segregated school with mostly black, some Spanish, and few white people in my classes. My class was reading our books when our teacher Ms. Americk (a nice white teacher) came in with a new student. My class was mostly full of kids my color (African American), but the new student was white. The next day she came to school. She got along with the classmates really well and wasn’t racist about being around us. This honestly proves that some white and black people can get along pretty well.”
This student disagreed with what she felt was an overly cynical perspective on my part. “The beauty of life is being able to meet different kinds of people and learning from them as well as giving them knowledge in return,” I responded. “It seems to me you’ve already had some experience in your life with this, and I think that’s great. I hope as you grow older this wonderful aspect of your life remains intact. You seem very courageous.”
When I wrote those words, I realized that this young girl’s ability to simply see another person and, in turn, to be seen had persuaded me more than my article had persuaded her. She had given me more hope than my honesty had given her. Maybe if we begin simply to see one another as persons, as these two young girls were able to do, then we could end with something like “democracy” and “justice” being synonymous in America. I thank these students for keeping my own hope alive, and for affirming that so long as one is attentive and mindful, one can reach for goodness and sympathy. I wonder if you are similarly moved.
