[Despanan]

Also Kindergarten, Occupy, Stop and Frisk, White Privilege, the expectation of autonomy, the NYPD...everything really.

Give it a read:

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/kindergartencops/

I know a boy named David. He is ten years old and shorter than the other boys, which makes him better at backflips. The cool girls all love him and he trades jackets with the ones he dates, unflinchingly confident in the fur hoods and pink lettering that would socially destroy any other boy. When you yell at him, he doesn’t look you in the eyes and he shrugs his shoulders repeatedly. I know because years ago, he was a student of mine, and his shruggy averted eye contact used to render me speechless with frustration.

I started thinking about David when my brother John was arrested at Occupy Wall Street for the second time. In my time as a white American adult, I’ve grown used to the expectation to have control over what happens to my body and the bodies I care about. It’s an expectation of privilege, one I only became aware of when the NYPD seized control over my brother’s body. I began to think about how many adults in the world have been systemically denied this autonomy. Specifically, I thought of the of the ones whose first interactions with their local police department came long before the age of 25, when mine did. Without my voluntary attendance at Occupy Wall Street, I probably could have gone the rest of my life without being shoved or threatened by a police officer; Jateik Reed and millions of other young men of color have no such choice. By walking to school or work or the bodega, their bodies are at risk of being beaten, detained, shot, and killed by the police...