First, while many of the kids in Johnson County were white, here, she is the minority. The youth of color are the first to learn the disparity of the justice system. Many girls there live in northern Indiana, close to the facility - places like Gary, La Porte, and other areas of the state that have a much higher concentration of people of color.
Bunny stands out with her blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin. But she also stands out for a lot of other reasons. She came to LaPorte already working ahead of her grade level, while the other girls are doing "credit recovery" work for deficiencies in her education. Bunny loves to read. So much so that she is reading to girls (The Hunger Games series) who never read and never enjoyed books because they are functionally illiterate. I ask her how much money she needs in her account for telephone calls, snack items and toiletries. Many other girls go without or are limited by what their families can afford. Bunny isn't a fan of the food. Other girls enjoy actually being guaranteed 3 meals a day. Her roommates are shocked by how much mail she gets and how supported she is - while many of them rarely hear from their families and almost never receive letters.
The very assumptions of their futures show the great divide in realities for teenager of color in Indiana....
Bunny knows the address she will return to and that she will have her own room and all her old stuff. The other girls have little confidence about their living arrangements and status of their stuff when they leave the system.
Bunny knows she will go back to school, finish early (thank to all the credits she is earning while in DOC) and then go to college. The other girls assume they will never go back to a normal school, maybe get a GED and laugh at the thought of college.
Bunny still dreams about all the possibilities for her future career and what interests she has. The other girls assume they will need to scrape by on low wage jobs, like their families and other friends do.
Bunny can't wait to put this behind her. The other girls assume that they (or someone close to them) will be in adult DOC before long. This connection to the system is part of the reality of their lives and social circles.
Attitudes. Expectations. Hopes. Dreams.
For the teenage girls of color in LaPorte with Buuny, her greatest demonstration of white privilege is hope for her future.
Like many, I am trying to listen and learn how I can be an antiracist...how I can be an ally for all people...how I can bring about change in my spheres of influence. But a lot of this is learning through books and social media - my current circles are very white - very secure - very insulated.
More and more, I believe that to really change that, it's the girls with Bunny right now who need a vision of hope. They need to be able to see themselves doing better than their parents before them. They need to see education and better careers as a possibility to help break generational poverty cycles. They need connections with positive influences that give them opportunities beyond gangs, drugs and violence. This isn't me adopting a posture as a white savior - it's recognizing that while the day-in and day-out systems that my kids live in set them up for success, Bunny's roommates are set up to fail. Their everyday systems (education, judicial, economic, etc) are unequal, generationally disadvantaged and limited.
Bunny's reality is what we usually paint as the american dream....live in a wealthy country and make use of every resource and opportunity to become anything you want to be. There's no limit to what you can achieve if you are willing to work hard.
What she is learning, through casual conversation on a near daily basis, is that this is not the American Dream. This is white middle class dream. If you are born into enough privilege, you can springboard yourself anywhere else you want to go.
The unjust deaths reported in the news should break our hearts. They should cause us to be outraged. But so should the difference in the schools in Gary and the schools in West Lafayette. We should be just as outraged by the inequality of healthcare for people of color. We should be just as broken by the lack of hope young people face, as their grief when another black life is lost. If black lives truly matter, then we should be advocating for their youth, for their education, for their support systems - not just that they shouldn't be murdered.
George Floyd couldn't breathe.
These girls with Bunny cannot hope.
Both are a tragedy.....
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