That Could’ve Been My Child

Originally published August 2018 as a guest post on Angela Noel’s blog You Are Awesome. She recently encouraged guest bloggers to republish posts before she closes her site.

I remember November 24, 2014 like it was yesterday. The dreary weather in Chicago matched my spirits as I drove to work, wanting only to turn my car around, pick up my children from school and head home.

I’d learned just hours earlier that 12-yr-old Tamir Rice had been gunned down by a police officer in Cleveland, OH while playing in a park. I couldn’t help but think, “that could’ve been my child.” My children were 12, 16 and 17; a daughter and two sons; African American. Tamir Rice was playing in a park. He wasn’t in a gang, didn’t live or hang in a ‘bad neighborhood’, and was threatening no one. He was a child!

I pulled into the parking lot at the high school, turned off the car, and said to myself, “What the hell am I doing here?”

My mind twisted in knots trying to figure out what I could do to protect my children, but I had to walk into a building pretending that a tucked-in shirt and a good education would prepare these Black and Latinx students (and my children) for the dangers they would face on the street.

I realized that many of the choices we’d made to give our children a good life could actually put them in…