This paragraph on a black kindergartner's view of the world is absolutely crushing

[KamaAina]

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10792720/black-implicit-bias

The New York Times has one of the saddest stories about modern racial bias I have ever read, as told by Ebbie Banks, a black 17-year-old from Palo Alto, California:
I tutored a kid. This little black kid. He looked up to me a lot. One day he asked me, "Mr. Ebbie, is jail a good place to be?" I said, "Why would you ever ask that?" He said: "My daddy's in jail and he said he gets three meals a day. And sometimes my mom can't make me food and I'm hungry." I went home and I cried that night. This is a kindergartner. Teachers told him he was going to jail. I looked at him as a 5-year-old. I didn't see a criminal. I didn't see a drug dealer. I didn't see a rapist. I didn't see a gangbanger. I saw myself, when I was a little kid 10 years ago. The candidates, a lot of them, are from very privileged backgrounds and benefit from a white, male, Christian power structure. And that's O.K. I don't think that white people should feel guilty about their privilege. But they should feel a responsibility to acknowledge it.

The paragraph comes from a great series of stories by the Times about how different people view the 2016 elections, which you should absolutely read in full.

Banks's story is perhaps the most tragic anecdote in the series. It conveys one of the worst aspects of racial bias in America: Even children — kindergartners! — are vulnerable to racial prejudice. It is shocking that a little kid lives in a world where jail might seem like an appealing option, and his teachers are apparently telling him that he might go to jail.

But it's not just anecdotes. This prejudice is something that research on subconscious racial biases — also known as implicit bias — has found again and again: Black children, like their parents, tend to be viewed as less innocent and more aggressive for no reason other than their race.