Don't tell me it's not about race.
It IS about race.
It's about a black boy on his way to college shot by a white cop who had a gun and too much power.
It's about history, starting with the Middle Passage and not ending with Ferguson.
It's about us-vs-them-ism, that human scourge.
It's about the KKK and the Aryan Nation, about the white descendants of Southern slaveowners and Southern sharecroppers.
It's about white supremacy, which still exists.
It's about the perversion of religion to justify this kind of bullshit.
It's about a prosecutor who kowtowed to the police force instead of to the law.
It's about a cop who had a bug bite and a scratch mark and claimed he'd been attacked.
It's about hypocrisy. It's about selfishness. It's about a complete lack of compassion and empathy.
It's about black people being redlined by homeowners' insurance companies instead of by realtors, unable to get out of the ghetto.
It's about black Americans who can't live the American dream because the closest "real job" is forty miles away from their home.
It's about black children gunned down on the street by white cops and left laying there for four hours in the summer heat, drying.
It's about a black boy being labeled a "thug" for being a black boy.
It's about my black students and their black families.
It's about my black friends and their black loved ones.
It's about white privilege and black despair - the privilege to be outraged instead of frightened by this news.
It's about my black male students who live with this terror every single day because of your white racist excuses.
It's about my white friend who wouldn't stand up to you and tell you to stop being racist in his comment thread, but who told me that it was rude to say I'd blocked you.
It's about our world. This is the world we live in, this world we made and maintain.
History just repeats itself, and repeats itself again.
So don't tell me it's not about race. The only reason you don't see it is because you are not looking.