A glass can only spill what it contains

There’s a picture that made me break down yesterday. In the center of the picture there’s a black teenage male from Ferguson, MO yelling out to the world with clenched fists while friends and family try to console him. His pain was so loud that it seemed the picture came with audio, but how can anyone console a young person who continues to be sent the message that his life doesn’t matter?

While this picture was incredibly upsetting to me, I quickly realized that this isn’t my reality as a white male. In fact, I have the choice of even being impacted by the picture at all, or of the unjust killing of a young black boy in the streets of Ferguson, MO. I can walk outside tonight and not fear I will be stopped and frisked by police officers; that I can walk into a store and not be followed by the clerk; that I don’t have to walk to the other side of the street so as to avoid scaring the nice white lady walking her dog. And I don’t have to fear I will be shot or choked by a cop.

And I think that’s what impacts me the most about this photo: The teenager in this picture doesn’t have this choice. He’s trapped; he’s trapped inside a reality in which his neighbor is executed and left lying dead in the street for four hours with folks on TV claiming that “we don’t have all the facts;” a world in which people are debating whether Mike Brown was a “good” kid or a “bad” kid as if being a “bad” kid could ever justify the way he died; a country where this happens yet a white male can slaughter 12 innocent people in a movie theater and live to walk his way into a courtroom with a fair trial. Our system essentially says that killing someone in the street can be justified if the victim is black, even when he raises his unarmed hands to a cop or is only armed with a hoodie and a pack of skittles or is accused of being armed with illegal cigarettes that aren’t even found on him that day (or that if they were, then it’s justice served).

One of my favorite quotes says, “A glass can only spill what it contains.” – Aaron Weiss.

I ask you: what will our children of color spill out if we continue to allow these messages to pour into their glasses? What will our white children spill out if we continue to allow these messages to pour into their glasses?

We need to pour love into our children; love and understanding and humility (those last two are mostly for us white folks). If we, as adults, fail at this then our children will continue to live in a world absent of justice and peace and they will yell out to the world with clenched fists mourning the unjust death of their friend at the hands of a racist “justice” system.