At the age of 16, with the ability to drive, I was able to experience many more examples of the privilege I was afforded and witness, in comparison, the discrimination my friends faced regularly. For me, this was also an age of rebellion – wanting to stick it back to the system that I was just beginning to see as criminal in nature…
At one point, I returned a pair of barely-worn sneakers over 30 times in a year. Because I was white, no one questioned me. But my black friends didn’t have “the complexion for the protection,” as comedian Paul Mooney said, and so, I’d return their shoes ranging from size 7 to 14 with no problem. Most of these returns happened within minutes of my friends being denied. After meeting my friends in the mall parking lot, I would take the same pair back to the same person. The fact that my whiteness gave me clearance to return things my black friends couldn’t, infuriated me all over again.
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