When I was a 10 or 11, my cousin told me he had a jar that could catch sunlight. I wanted one so bad that I decided to make one. I wrapped a mason jar in electrical tape took it outside, opened it for a while & sealed it real tight.

I took it to my room, cut off the light...

Nothing!

My cousin was from NJ and was spending the summer down south, so he didn’t have access to his, but he assured me that his had could really catch sunlight! I must’ve been doing it wrong.

So I tried again. This time, I wrapped the jar with 3 layers of tape...

Nada.

Man, I tried to figure that shit out all summer! I tried leaving the jar out all day. I tried different lids. I tried duct tape. But nothing worked. And he PROMISED me his jar could catch sunlight. I was just doing something wrong but I couldn’t figure it out!

I was so obsessed with the shit that he got annoyed with me. He finally stopped helping me but I kept trying. It got to a point where he was tired of me asking questions about it.

He just knew that I was doing something wrong because his shit caught a LOT of sun.

At the end of the summer, we take my cousin back to NJ and stop at South of the Border.

Anyone who’s ever been on I-95 knows the spot. It’s basically a large gift shop for tourists. So we go in the gift Shop and my cousin picks up a jar and says “Hey Mikey...”

“Here’s that jar thing you keep asking about.”

It was just a regular mason jar but that shit really had sunlight in it! I looked at it and realized that they had just painted the top and bottom with how-in-the-dark paint. If you took it outside it just absorbed light.

(Some of you might not remember, but there was a fleeting moment in the 80s when Glo-in-the-dark stuff was VERY popular)

It was $20!!!

I was mad AF. Not because I couldn’t afford the jar. It’s not like my cousin lied to me. He probably thought he was really catching sunshine.

He had no reason to examine HOW it worked. All he had to do was open his jar a catch sunlight. But I had worked all summer. I had no idea why I was mad back then, but now I do.

I was mad because my cousin acted like I must’ve been doing something wrong when I didn’t catch light.

Like “you must not be THAT smart if you can’t figure it out. I already have one, so I know it works.”

But that ride to NJ is kinda long. By the time we arrived in NJ, we were first cousins again.

When we got to his house, he showed me his jar.

This dude was using a $20 motherfucking Mason jar that catches sunshine as a piggy bank!

Then, he told me I could have it!

I told him no.

He couldn’t understand why I said no, since I had been trying to make one all summer.

But I wanted to MAKE It.

Now, my cousin is Black, but that’s when I first understood white privilege.

A lot of white people really believe that anyone who is doesn’t succeed in America MUST’VE been doing it wrong.

They really believe white people don’t get shot by cops because wypipo don’t resist

They really believe the disparities in criminal justice is because whites people aren’t committing crimes. They really think it’s a “poverty problem not a racism problem” that could easily be solved with a little more white education & negro elbow grease.

But I get it...

That’s how white privilege works. They really think they know how to catch the sun

Even worse, they truly believe we could do it too if we just used the right jar.

...Like the one that was handed to them.