There is a certain amount of privilege that goes along with being a 25 year old, middle class, white woman in the South. When a stranger looks at me, I’m generally given the benefit of doubt. I have never been pulled over by police, walked through my neighborhood, or gone into a convenience store and been questioned under the glaring eye of suspicion. I’ve never been turned down for a job. If an alarm goes off as I walk through Target, security assumes an employee didn’t do their job and remove the tags from the clothing in my bag. They apologize for my inconvenience, they don’t assume I was shoplifting. (What if I was?)

And yet, knowing this, I cannot begin to imagine what it’d be like to live life everyday being on the losing-end of this scheme. When there is a different standard set for different people in America, we end up with young boys losing their lives in the street, and murderers being set free. But before we can begin to eradicate this type of institutionalized racism, we have to admit it even exists.

And it exists. Trayvon died from being Black in America.