I look into those rich, dark-brown eyes and I see my two African American boys looking back at me, with all the dreams of youth and all the dignity of the life I hope they’ll live deep into distant horizons.
Then I see that face in a coffin — the coffin of a 15-year-old from the Mesquite Independent School District east of Dallas, unarmed then and now — and I think, “Dear God, how is this happening again? How do I know mine won’t be next? Am I too going to end up at a press conference next to a lawyer hoping against hope that three fatal bullets or two weeping parents or one more brown body in the streets of whatever-city-is-next can finally wake us from the stupor so many struggle to even acknowledge?”