#checkmyself

I am the poster child of a white privileged American. I was raised in a completely white, wealthy neighborhood in Fairfield County, Connecticut. My mother did not want me to be educated in a town with such little diversity so she sent me to a private school in a different town. This private school was still primarily white except for the two or three children of color they would place in each grade. As a child I didn’t understand the lack of diversity present in my community, I thought that there were just not as many black people in America - that all schools and towns had the same level of diversity.

Growing up, I had the privilege of never being scared of cops. My heart rate never sped up when a cop was near, in fact, my family was quite friendly with the neighborhood cop, George. Every time we saw George, we would pull over to have a friendly conversation with him. The idea of there being flaws in the police system was not introduced to me until I began to notice that when we drove on the highway and would see a person of color pulled over, my mom would say they are being pulled over for DWB: Driving While Black. This concept always confused me but I never really took the time to think about it until we began to learn about slavery and the civil rights movement in the fourth grade.

We read a book in school called “Trouble Don’t Last” which was about two young boys escaping slavery through the underground railroad. I remember reading this book thinking that slavery must have taken place thousands of years ago. It wasn’t until learning about the civil rights movement with primary sources that were still alive, that I realized the discrimination of people of color was not so far behind us.

Over the past five or six years, I have been able to gain a better understanding of where our country was with racism and civil rights. In middle school I moved to New York City where the lessons taught about civil rights we less of a requirement and more of a responsibility. I began to understand that Dr. Martin Luther King was not the end of the movement but more of a momentum in the movement. But just until thirty minutes ago, I believed discrimination in the country was only a social matter and had nothing to do with the law.

Over the summer when George Floyd was murdered, the Black Lives Matter movement became larger than it had ever been before. #BLM flooded my social media addressing that it was my responsibility to educate myself on why this movement mattered and what I was supposed to do about it. In response, I took the time to read articles on cases of police brutality and read instagram posts that tell white people what they should be doing during this time. However I still believed that this was only a social issue and that since I personally did not discriminate against people of color, that I was done and could take a seat. I thought that I was anti-racists because believed that I would speak out if I saw an act of racism.

When it comes to politics, I call myself a libertarian. I believe that people should be able to live however they want as long as if it does not effect anyone else. I thought that whoever you voted for did not effect racial issues in this country because there are no laws that specifically discriminate against people of color. The idea of talking about racial issues in politics gave me a headache because I did not see the point.

A few months ago, my friend recommended that I watch the documentary “The 13th”. I choose not too because I thought it would be a lot of what I had been seeing in the media for the past few years: made up sources and made up information about who said what, in efforts to connect racial injustice in America to politics.

I have now been assigned to watch the film, so I did and everything I ever thought I knew about police brutality and racial injustice in the country is completely changed. This documentary allowed me to really look in the mirror and think about how ignorant I had been and honestly probably still am to discrimination in this country. I have realized I am the problem, if not part of it.

I used to feel like I was being accused of something when people would tell me to “educate myself”. Now I realize it is not people trying to accuse me, it is people trying to help me step out of the dark. When people ask you to educate yourself, they are not trying to start a debate about police brutality, they are simply trying to encourage you to know everything there is to know so that whatever your opinion is on the subject, it is genuine. After watching this documentary, I feel almost as if I have been lied to, but the truth is that information has always been there, I just never pushed myself to seek it out. Regardless of how I was raised, the only person I have to blame for my ignorance is myself because ignorance is a choice. There had always been signs of racism in this world that I encounter growing up but I subconsciously choose to push them aside because I wanted to believe that the world was better than it is.

I always knew that people of color should be treated equally but what this film also made me understand is that they should not have to fight to be treated equally. Equality is a right, not something you have to earn. The BLM movement was never about people being sensitive, it is about people that are tired of having to be strong. I never understood my role as a white privileged person in this movement until now. It didn’t take arguments or persuasion, all it took was this film that simply displayed facts with real sources.

"Whoever continuously abandons the Sunnah prayers, then this shows a weakness in his religion."