Editor’s Note: This gallery is a complimentary piece to Clara Green’s article “The True Crime” about the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
Five days after the school year started in Atlanta, Georgia, Mike Brown lay dead in a Ferguson street. I had just started teaching middle school social studies in a Title I. school with a 97% black study body. The next week, I stayed late after school and with the assistance of fellow teachers, drove around thirty students to a local protest in support of Ferguson. After the protest, the students felt a sense of accomplishment and excitement. But those feelings have since waned.
I did not know then that these public killings and public outcries would continue throughout the school year. With each new case, I have challenged my students to discuss, debate, and write about their feelings. Increasingly, they have become frustrated with this process. Their comments reflect a sense of hopelessness and anger. “In real life we all know the government isn’t gonna do anything about it, and the police isn’t gonna do anything about it,” one student tells the class. “I’m used to it. It’s not a surprise to me. I’m just like oh, another person got shot.”
During the recent Baltimore uprising, the nation discussed whether or not rioting is logical and legitimate. But not my students. Not one of them questioned why people riot – they only debated if it’s a wise tactic. These are some of their reflections from one of our many conversations.
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!["I think that the violent protests are necessary. It will force law enforcement to change, unlike the peaceful protest[s] that make take a decade to succeed"](https://sevenscribes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1-150x150.png)
- “I think that the violent protests are necessary. It will force law enforcement to change, unlike the peaceful protest[s] that make take a decade to succeed”
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- The events that are going on make me mad at the police. I’m also mad at the m—- that still keep the police in the police force. Also, I want to go there and help make a change. It is not fair. They kill us, but when we fight back we are called thug and bad names.
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- I care about the situation but I know it would never change because the white men would always be over the black men. I feel so used to it that I have little hope and even if the world changes, the white men would still be over the black. For example, a person makes a game up and plays it with someone else. Of course the person who makes the game up is going to win because he or she could just add new rules to make them win. That’s how life is now. We blacks are playing the white game. Unless we change our act and start [to] get job[s] then the white[s] can no longer rule and everything would be equal. We have to start taking action by making our system so the white[s] have no reason to attack.
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- Violence is never ok because there is no benefit from it. it might be useful if you are using it for self defense. I feel that there are other ways we can answer to a police killing a person rather than violence. No matter what, nothing seems to be changing. There are people who die everyday and it seems that the government doesn’t care.
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- I think that some people in Baltimore are taking this too far. Sure burning down buildings and looting stores are going to get police attention, but not in a good way. The people who own these businesses have nothing to do with this situation. When you burn these businesses you’re taking away jobs. Job.s Which people work to earn money for their family. With no money, crime on the street increases and something like this can happen again.
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- Violence is sometimes ok in self-defense. It is useful as “the natural order is chaos” and “the only way for new growth is the destruction of the old.” Shouldn’t we tear down those oppressive governments that limit the freedom of the people who they promise to free? It is as simple as that. This police brutality case should be over by now, which makes it slightly hard to repeatedly hear about it in class. This is because the government hasn’t complied, leaving the only solution to be tearing the current one down.
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- I do not feel like the protesters should be using violence to express themselves. They are destroying buildings, which will not help them at all. There are also already many stereotypes on African Americans and them burning and looting schools is not helping to get rid of them. I do not think that police should be using violence towards African Americans. Police need to be better watched by those above them to ensure that they are not unnecessarily violent.
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- “Violence isn’t justified. I feel like what the police did was wrong because they just walk around killing innocent Black people. If a black cop were to kill a white citizen then the gov’t and the court would be all over that case, however you don’t see that happening when a white cop kills a Black citizen b/c they don’t care about black people[‘s] life. Violence is sometimes useful but it’s not useful when you’re shooting somebody just for the sake of shooting someone. It’s exhausting hearing about this all the time. I feel like it’s important but I’ve gotten so used to these situations that it’s not even surprising anymore. I don’t like talking about this all the time b/c it’s annoying and wastes our time. If we just talking about it & not doing anything, then there is no need to talk about it which means we are wasting our time dwelling on a situation that we are not going to solve. I care about the situation, I just feel like talking about it wastes our time.