A few months ago, in Silver Spring, a white family who lives a handful of meaningful miles away from my school in Southeast D.C. was scorned for allowing 10- and 6-year-old children to walk home from school by themselves. This story made national news. Parents everywhere were outraged. Child neglect. Carelessness. These were national headlines.
A few days ago, my co-worker was leaving work later than others and noticed that two of our 8-year-old girls were still waiting at the bus stop. They were alone. When asked why they hadn't gotten on the bus yet, they laughed. "We were playing and we missed it." These girls, like a large percentage of my 8-year-olds, go home by themselves every single day, traveling through much tougher terrain than Silver Spring.
Nobody cares.
About two months ago, these same two girls' 16-year-old brother was shot and killed at that very same bus stop. He was shot by another black kid, around the same age. The reason was unclear. Someone said something at some basketball game. Neighborhood violence. Black on black crime. You know the drill.
Nobody cares.
Being from Baltimore, I have been thinking a lot about what is going on at home. I am white. My family has always had more than enough. I was never not going to go to college. I have a lot of a privileged white friends on Facebook, etc., who ask a lot of questions. "Why do people think that violence is the answer to violence?" They say things like, "This isn't the real Baltimore."
I find myself with a large pit in my stomach. While I don't want to draw unfair comparisons, these kids (that is what most of the rioters are) in Baltimore are very similar to my kids. They are the poorest of the poor. They are black.
Of the 75 third-graders I teach, two of them go home to their biological mom and dad each night. A handful of them are reading at a third-grade level. All of them have been dealt the toughest odds in the game.
All of them needed a reason to think that I cared about them before they listened to me. Before I could begin to teach them.
Many people condemn the violence that has occurred over the past few days. Senseless, they say. While I am not condoning it, it is anything but senseless. It actually makes complete sense. The people causing the destruction have no reason to think that anyone cares about their fate because they have never been given a reason to think that. Until we give all members of society a reason to think that anyone cares about them, change cannot happen. We need to approach this situation with empathy rather than disdain.
If we are going to care about the two white kids walking home alone in Silver Spring, we need to make the same fuss about my students. If we are going to advocate for more security and overload the story on the news after a murder of a white person, we need to do the same for each black life that is lost. We need to start listening, and we need to start caring.
Victoria Klein, Washington, DC
The writer is a third-grade teacher at Democracy Prep Public Charter School.