When I was a senior at Grant, I was given extra credit to attend a zero-period class about policing.

I believe it was a YGAT initiative. I sat in that class w/ one eyebrow cocked as they rolled in armed policemen who explained to us that they weren't racist.

We hadn't asked.

Class was full of Black kids. When I went to Grant, there were a good number of Black students (unlike now), but this was the only time in that building I was ever in a class with all Black students (and I played sports).

Finally, someone asked why they beat us up in school.

The police - all white males if I do recall - discussed real scenarios as the boys in the class brought them up.

Children replayed their trauma for the police and teachers, and the police then explained to us why the police were correct to harm our peers.

Brow stayed cocked.

Senior year was my first year in Portland Public Schools.

We never had classes like that in Evergreen School District. Not in 1998.

I've always wondered if white girls ever get herded into rooms like that, and if they do, what do they talk about? Not cops... Who teaches them?

When @SeemabHussaini talks about A Tale of Two Cities, he isn't lying or exaggerating or making it up.

We really get routed to different destinations based on how we look, what we wear, how we tip, who we retweet..

And for some of us, based on how we interact with cops.

Anyway, since every answer the police gave revolved around "in order to gain control" I asked them why cops were felt it was their duty to take control of every situation they find themselves in, and if they saw that inflexibility as a rootcause of their confrontations.

I mean, I had literally just heard the story of a student being slammed into a locker by an armed adult be copsplained as an officer trying to take control after a student bumped him aggressively in the hallway amidst the threat of being jumped by students.

I had just learned the term "overwhelming show of force" and it was used to explain why it takes 5 police cars to pull over a Black man in NE.

And why pulling over a Black man in a nice car on the West side isn't racist because he "appears to be out of place".

I had just heard, for the first time, an officer talk about how scared he was to get hurt and leave a widow & kids behind.

Then he went on to tell us that if it's between him going home & him shooting somebody he deems a threat, he gotta do what he gotta do.

Sir, I'm a child.

I don't know. It was a decade before I ever hired a lawyer but I felt like I needed a lawyer in the moment. My parents at the least.

I'm looking at the teachers who brought us in here like:

I think back on that morning often. Why did y'all have me in there with police?

Were they gauging me? Were they seeing if I'd be cool with them?

Man, fuck that brainwashing shit.

IF ANYTHING, the kids should be going to the precinct, telling the cops how THEY can do better.

But preferably, just keep the cops the fuck away from Black kids AT MINIMUM.

School is a child space. Not a police space. I actually felt violated.

I don't think I ever even told my parents. I was embarrassed I got tricked into going.

That's the story!