If Baltimore police had over-policed my majority white neighborhood, or had stopped and frisked me, I would’ve gone to prison, not college.

In 11 years in that neighborhood I saw 2 cop cars. In Baltimore City.

But again, majority white neighborhood. So teenagers drinking, doing drugs, graffitiing wasn’t policed.

White private school kids in Baltimore have the resources to buy huge amounts of alcohol and drugs. I witnessed an unbelievable amount of underage drinking, drug use, and driving under the influence. And those kids will soon be running the city and state.

A mile away kids went to prison for less.

When people talk about “back the blue”, hire more police etc, they’re never talking about cops throwing THEIR kids up against the wall, or on the ground.

More white people need to speak up about this. As a teenager I drank underage and did drugs, obviously illegal activities. But there were almost never any police around. The difference between me and the kid a mile away who got locked up was skin color, wealth, and privilege.

The clearest example is probably how predominantly white college campuses are hotbeds of drinking and drug use at astronomical rates, with no consequences, while again young people of color engaged in any behavior remotely like that in a different environment are criminalized.

Or even in that environment. At my predominantly white college, Black students walking through campus were often stopped by campus security for no reason other than that they were Black, while white students like myself drank and used drugs with near impunity.