I spend almost all my waking hours around my young sons. What happened to Tamir Rice will never happen to them, because they are white. White children simply do not get shot by police for having toy guns.

When I was a teenager and young adult, I walked in public spaces, drunk or high, sometimes a mix of the two. When I was in college, I routinely possessed drugs. I did not get arrested and sentenced to prison, as black men routinely are. During a particularly bad chapter of my youth, I caused a station wagon full of my friends to be pulled over by a police officer when I shouted “Officer Bacon”. The officer intimidated and berated me. He did not arrest me. He did not touch me. He did not even ask me to get out of the car. He did not taze me. I am still alive.

The deaths that black people routinely die are not the deaths that white people routinely die. And this shit has been going on FOR CENTURIES, since the first African captives were sold in Jamestown in 1619. Deep Southern slave culture arrived from Barbados in 1670. The justice that black people receive is both a lesser and harsher justice than that which white people receive. This racism is central to our economic system. Slavery built America.

I do not understand how so many of my fellow melanin-deficient brothers and sisters fail to understand this. This is our nation’s history. Wake up. Read. Have some empathy. History informs the present.

The only explanation for not understanding is willful blindness.