A few months ago, in Silver Spring, Md., a white family who lives a few meaningful miles away from the school where I teach in Southeast D.C. was scorned for allowing their 10 and six-year-old children to walk home from school by themselves. The 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 three of our eight-year-old girls were still waiting at the bus stop. They were alone. “We were playing and we missed it,” they laughed. These girls, like a lot of my kids, go home by themselves every day, traveling through much tougher terrain than Silver Spring.
Nobody cares.
About two months ago, a young boy was shot and killed right outside of our school. He was shot by another black kid. The reason was unclear. Someone said something at some basketball game. Neighborhood violence. 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. There was never any chance I wouldn’t go to college. I have a lot of privileged white friends on Facebook, etc., who ask questions. “Why do people think that violence is the answer to violence?” They say things like, “This isn’t the real Baltimore.”
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, I know of only two who go home to their biological mother and father each night. A handful of them read at 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.
Each morning, I start the school day off by greeting my kids at the classroom door. “Good morning,” I say, greeting them each by name. “It’s great to see you today.”
A tiny voice screams inside of me: “I CARE. I CARE. I CARE. Do you hear me?”
The kids then sit down for breakfast. Our school is 100 percent free breakfast and lunch, an indicator of poverty level.
“Make sure you eat all of your breakfast,” I remind Jackson a few minutes later.
Please know that I care.
Many people condemn the violence that has occurred over the past few days. Senseless, they say. I am not condoning it, but it is not senseless. It actually makes 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. The sounds of destruction are the sounds of despair. The police sirens should be the alarms that wake us up to the reality of the situation.
If we are going to care that much about 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 is a teacher in Washington, D.C. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
