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| Me at 16 going through my blond phase |
For the last few days
I have read so many comments about the Michael Brown Case. I have unplugged for
a few hours just to keep my sanity. Plus, my homework kept calling my name, and
so I would go back to work on homework, but I couldn’t shake this deep sadness
that I felt.
Finally, tonight in my quiet time I realized where that
sadness came from.
If any of you would have met me at 13, 14, 15, 16, and even
17 years of age, you would have thought that I was just a “thug” and a product
of my low-income environment. Today when people ask about my childhood, I simplify by using the television show, Sons of Anarchy as a comparison to my childhood, especially my teen years. They were very destructive years for various reasons.
However, I am female. I am white. So in many ways, I cannot
compare myself to Michael Brown. I don’t know much about his background, but I do know he
did finished high school, something that I didn’t do.
But today I am alive. I have lived a life. I have had kids. I
have been given this amazing chance and I am attending a university to get my
bachelor’s degree. Late in my teens my life was redeemed by the Grace of God. I
was removed from my environment and given a chance to change and I did. It wasn’t
because I had character that is for sure. There wasn't anything special about me. Yet, Chuck’s aunt took a chance and hired
me and I traveled selling books door to door, that was my avenue out of the
environment that I lived.
I should have ended up in prison, for that was the path that
I was walking no running down. I hung around some
pretty unsavory characters. I am not proud of this, but it is a part of my
story. I could have been shot on more than one occasion. I could have been
thrown away as another statistic, but for some reason I wasn’t. Tonight I share
this as one of those “bad” youths.
Tonight I also share this as a mother who almost lost her
boy a few years ago due to an illness. I can’t imagine what Michael Brown’s parents feel. The grief. The loss. We
know that he made a mistake, but was that mistake worthy of death? I don’t believe
so. I did things worse than steal some cigars from a convenience store. But
here I am.
I believe that so many have lost sight of what it is like to make a mistake as a youth. And as a parent, how do we handle crisis that come up in our children’s lives? Do we not embrace our children and help them? The Browns were never given that chance.
I understand that everything is political. I understand that
some only see one side of the story whether that person lines up with the
Browns or with the police. But the truth is the Browns will live the rest of
their lives missing their son. They will never get to hug him, talk to him, to see
him get married or get a promotion, or go to college.
I end with this. During my first semester at Columbia in my writing
class, I sat in a group of about six or seven people. Four of them were men,
three white and one African American. We were discussing the Stop and Frisk
policy in NYC and I asked these men if they had been stopped. All of them had. Even though the African American man was much closer to
my age than the other three twenty something males. All four of them told me of
stories of being stopped by the police in NYC. Two were stopped at gunpoint. I
was completely shocked. How could this happen, I thought. For whatever it
counts as, these were men that attend Columbia University and had been stopped
forcefully by the police. There is a problem in our society with power. It may
not be that big of a problem where you live. But I would ask, what is your
gender? What is the color of your skin? For both of those characteristics seem
to make a difference in parts of this country.
None of these issues are going to be fixed overnight and
there are no easy answers. These are complex issues with many variables, but we
must remember there are parents grieving the loss of their son tonight. While my son is
sitting at the table working on his homework while I work on mine.
