a moment of clarity.

an ongoing discussion. 

words. 

"Let’s say you’re a teenaged black male living in public housing in an impoverished neighborhood. Your local public schools are far inferior to those in wealthy neighborhoods, and you’re financially cut off from private schooling. Without a good education, your opportunities for economic betterment are few, so you turn to selling drugs. Because drug enforcement across the country favors arrests in poor and nonwhite communities, you’re arrested outside your apartment. You become one of the 30 percent.

...Meanwhile, the white college senior across town has been selling coke to partygoers for his entire four-year tenure. The cops don’t patrol his dorm building like they do your housing project, and they don’t make Terry stops in his upscale neighborhood like they do in your ghetto. You’ve committed the same crimes, but he never encounters the police, never gets wrapped up in the criminal justice system. You are one of the 30 percent. He is not. He goes on to become a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, a cop."

GAWKER: The American Police State Hates Black and Poor People