I, like many others, experienced an automatic response to the images of the rioting in Minnesota. It felt wrong. It looked wrong. That isn't how solution, progress, or change works. /1

Thankfully, living in a city where I am a minority and teaching to a student population where I am minority has taught me an important lesson. To shut up and listen. /2

It is easy to categorize things as right and wrong when you believe you have the ability to change government and institutions. You feel you exercise some control over the broader environment (even if you don't). /3

That efficacy is supported by institutions that reflect your ideals and support you. Even protect you. At a minimum, these institutions don't attack you. /4

People of color don't have this benefit. The institutions of government and power do not exist to support them. They exist to restrict them, criminalize them, punish them, and yes, even kill them. /5

White America likes to prioritize concepts like justice, fairness, freedom, and equality but only in the abstract. They know the institutions support their justice, fairness, freedom, and equality. When it gets applied to others, their abstract support drops. /6

I could recite a litany of names just within the past five years to add George Floyd to. And whites, even liberal whites, were up in arms about police brutality. For a day. Maybe a week. /7

It isn't their life under threat, the institution doesn't constantly reinforce the grim truth in their life. And if they feel unsafe, the Amy Cooper's of the world know that the institution will come to their protection. /8

I don't believe that violence is inherently the best way to change institutions, but I have never felt threatened by them. I have never been in position where I felt under threat because an institution criminalizes being.

And cis white friends, neither have you. /9

Changing the institution from the inside is hard enough, but imagine that not only can't you get inside, but the guards have their guns pointed at you. If you want to change that institution, burning it down may appear the only choice. /10

I find it a bit sickening that every white follower of my generation can sing along to every damn lyric of Sublime's April 26, 1992, N.W.A's Fuck the Police, and Rage's Killing in the Name. The soundtrack of our teenage years describes the problems of society in our 40s. /11

What have we done to make it better?

And while you are reflecting on that, at a minimum, push down your criticism of people who are victims of our inaction. /e