A merciless chill hugged me tighter than my coat could as I descended the hill from the dorms. The sky was pure and blue, and the snow glared from its icy January armor. I looked at my feet, careful to avoid the sludge that flowed in the path ahead. The path cut deep into the blanket of snow; a few months and thousands of hurried footsteps had permanently marred this otherwise pristine winter skin. Today my scarf was pulled tighter than usual and both of my earbuds were firmly planted in their places. From them, J Cole lamented the killing of another innocent man. The ground seemed the only thing worth looking at.
Earlier that morning, the head of community government at my boarding school groggily announced, “Everyone, if you are free, please join the Young Activists Club for a march through town at 3:00 in front of the theater in support of the recent deaths that we’ve heard so much about in the news.” His voice faltered a bit at the end of the announcement, and the air in the room was stiff as winter coughs were stifled.
As I arrived in front of the theater, I picked my gaze from the ground to see clusters of kids and teachers funneling in. They looked as if the numbing cold had snuck beneath their jackets as it had mine. At least I imagined it had. How could it not; the video had permanently lodged itself into our Facebook timelines. Always preceded by, Warning: Contains Distressing Images, a message that lost its potency long ago, it relentlessly repeated everywhere I looked online. White officers surround a Black man and in a flurry of misplaced footsteps and grunts, he topples to the ground; soon his tense resistance and cries for relief soften, leaving the rest of the story to the coroner and the caption. Everyone seemed to vehemently pick a side, citing the law, or morality, or simply human error. This was not the death of one man. It was one more piercing bullet in a long list of eerily similar cases. The country was poised for real change, or at least a conversation. That day, another blow struck as my phone buzzed, revealing in bold white letters, “NYTimes Update: No Indictment for Officer Involved in Eric Garner Case.” This death followed the same script as every single one of its predecessors, a saga so predictable it seemed like fiction.
The procession began and I quickly found myself alone. I scanned the crowd for Shomari or Rajan or Haoxuan or Cator; our conversations and text messages had been laden with the case all day, yet I saw none of them at the march. They must be too busy, I thought, and pushed it to the outer edges of my attention, focusing solely on the mission ahead. Signs that read “Black Lives Matter” jutted upward and voices shot into the thin winter air.
“I CAN’T BREATHE, I CAN’T BREATHE!” echoed through the suburban streets.
Porsches and Audis and Volvos kept their windows up. A few honked in support. As the procession continued, I kept my eyes glued to the sodden ground. A few lonely flakes danced around the luxury cars and the skeletal trees. They teach you that every flake is unique when you’re a kid, but from here they’re all the same shape and hue, blown in groups by the slightest wind. A quick flash diverted my attention and my eyes met with the school’s media consultant. She followed the parade with a long lens and a slight smile. Always in the corner at promotional events or in classes, sometimes she simply observes and sometimes she pulls a student or two from the halls so the photos have a “nice mix.” Another flash caught my eye. A few kids in front of me were taking snapchats. Another flash later a few in front of them were as well. A few smiles here, some giggles there. A group of white day students, all residents of wealthy Westchester County, gripped the sign emblazoned with “I Can’t Breathe" and beamed like it was prom day. Their faces weren't wrought with anguish. All day my chest had steadily filled with an aimless fervor, but as I scanned these faces it drained, leaving a hollow cavity in its place. Every single face was the same. The entire day I had spoken with my Asian, Black, and Latino friends, and they lamented the deaths, dealing with the pain in their own ways, yet the crowd was devoid of anyone other than white screaming faces, documenting every moment.
The school touts its “diversity percentage” as an integral part of the advertised experience, yet here I marched with people who looked just like me and just like everyone from my secluded white town and just like those officers in the video. In the same way that we came to school repeating the latest dance move some inner city kids were doing online, or said “nigga” because it’s ok when you’re just singing along, we marched down the streets emulating the people we saw on the news. I tore off from the group, suppressing the impulse to yell. As my pace crescendoed, I heard someone behind me shout, "Oh, make sure to get one for the website!"
I ran out of town, up the hill, past the dorm, and into a rocky clearing in the woods. Gazing up I watched as the few visible patches of clear blue sky were obscured. The sun dove into the clouds and a flurry of white flakes took its place. I couldn't tell if the echoes of “I can’t breathe” were still emanating from town or from my own head. J Cole’s defeated voice pulled on my ears, but my earbuds were coiled tightly in my pocket. The winter breeze clamped my eyes shut and as I reopened them the world around me blurred. Warm tears were met with a bitter chuckle as flakes fell faster and the blizzard began — a blizzard that would never end, simply fading to dismal white noise.
“Shomari, where were you today?” I asked as I lay in my bed examining the fragmented silhouettes of trees projected onto my wall by the full moon.
The dorm room mattress groaned as he turned to ask, “When?” Shifting my attention from the quivering shadows, I responded, “At the march.”
“Oh, I was in the room watching Anime,” he said, seemingly indifferent.
Just the night before we lay in this same position and grappled with the video. He had spoken of the anxious fear that he felt around police as a Black boy from Brooklyn, and how it solidified each time another case like this came out. “To Protect and Serve is what it says on their badges, I’ve just never been able to believe it,” he said, followed by a long, stagnant pause. “I wish there was something I could do… anything… but we’re just so small.” How could he feel such a passion to do something, yet choose to skip the only real opportunity we had to say something?
“Shomari, why didn't you go the march?” The question hung in the air accompanied by the hint of an accusatory tone.
He began slowly, “Today in English, Hannah said, ‘I just can’t believe something like this could happen within 30 miles of my house, I just thought that we had moved on as a society, at least in this part of the world.’ … That’s why I couldn’t go.” Shomari knew something about the march that I had failed to see. My realization -- the one that drove me to splinter from the group -- was not news to him at all. He had to wrestle with it every day, as did all of my friends of differing identities and upbringings who had failed to show up. Rajan was from Brooklyn, Cator was from Jersey, and Haoxuan was from Wuhan, and they all saw something that I hadn't discerned through my wholly white small-town lens. The lack of perspective repelled them. The encompassing bubble of our privilege is a two-way mirror; inside we only see our reflection, refracted and distorted, and as one pushes at its edges, infinite fractals of the minutiae of our own lives swirl around on its walls, obscuring the other side. Their view from outside has a painful clarity, yet remains just as impenetrable.