These were transforming words for those of us who listened. As I heard these young leaders, I realized America would be converted by these young people’s honest and earnest conversation—they would clearly win a national debate about our criminal justice system’s response to young people of color—if the nation could really see and hear them. That is why they have been deliberately marginalized and painted with the brush of false narratives that polarize our responses to them, a polarization so painfully and starkly along racial lines.
No different for white Parkland students, at least to a degree.
