“[…] white middle-class privilege meant it took me a long time to learn that justice is not color-blind. Young men of color learn that lesson much earlier. In college and grad school, I was stunned by the stories of mistreatment and abuse at the hands of police that I heard from African-American and Latino students and colleagues. Their anecdotes of being stopped for “driving while black” or for “looking like a gangbanger” fit with the sad larger story of criminal justice in this country. Even now, black and Hispanic young men are far more likely to be arrested – and locked up for longer — than their white male counterparts. Though many individual cops are not bigots, only the hopelessly naïve or the deeply prejudiced could believe that these higher rates of incarceration are because young men of color simply commit far more crimes.”
