The day after the Ferguson verdict I was in front of my journalism 1 students asking what they thought of an officer taking a young man’s life.  Their answer, trust the system. This resonated in my heart and mind over the last week.  Trust the system.  Trust the system.  Where has trusting the system gotten us when one week later a grand jury decides once again not to indict a police officer for killing a man by using a chokehold on him? The chokehold, an unauthorized use of force according to the NYPD handbook, and a coroner ruling the death as a homicide, meant nothing.

Here is what I am not going to avoid: he was black just as Michael Brown was, and just as I am.

Back in front of my journalism 1 class, students kept asking me what I thought.  My answer, as with most issues was, “This is about you, not me,” but at the end of the discussion I was so dissatisfied with the conversation’s imbalance I decided I would share my opinion with any student interested enough to approach me one-on-one.

The next day before heading down to a journalism forum, one of my students asked me and I told her my truth.  Every encounter I have had with an on-duty police officer, not prefaced with them knowing me as Mr. Panton, has been negative. From watching those close to me get arrested for nothing, to being asked, “Why are you talking to me like that?” The not so veiled implication of that last statement being that a young black man should not speak as though he is educated. Only some of us have those stories.  A harsh unchangeable reality.

I told my student what journalists are afraid to admit,  I am biased. I know what it means to be harassed; it has permanently changed me.  I don’t have children.  I don’t see Michael Brown as someone that could be my son or Eric Garner as someone who could have been my father.  Michael Brown is me.  Eric Garner is me.

My student’s eyes focused on mine, but that thought pushed my focus away.  I told her that the violence is what bothers me. The violence of shooting an unarmed man.  The violence of choking someone to death.  Unexplainable, unjustifiable violence.  I told her to read this article about the lack of enforcement within the police departments we trust to enforce laws they break.

If it helps, leave color out of it.  The simple acceptance, the justifiable killing, is something I can’t accept.  Unlike my journalism 1 students, I simply can’t trust the system.