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What My Grandfather Knew, and What My Classmates Never Got
I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandfather’s hands. I remember them being sun-worn and calloused, the kind that told you he built his life one envelope at a time as a postal worker. Skin cancer caught up with him from years in the sun. No compensation was offered. He didn’t even know he could ask.
It’s this quieter and more subtle form of injustice and social violence that America runs on.
Meanwhile, I’ve gone to five schools. Some had decent funding. Others didn’t have working printers. Of course, “smart kids” had better tech, smaller classes. Most of them were white. I was one of them…and I knew plenty of smart kids who weren’t in the gifted track. They just didn’t get the same chance.
We talk a lot about opportunity in this country, but opportunity here is kind of like playing Monopoly starting three rounds late. If your school can’t afford counselors or working Chromebooks, you’re not lazy…you are outmatched.
Another example we can look to is labor. For example, those people rebuilding after wildfires and storms…many of them immigrants…work without safety gear. No labor protections. No legal recourse.
When our institutions weaken the watchdogs and call it “efficiency,” it’s the workers who bleed.
My grandfather never got justice. And a lot of kids in schools like mine won’t either. Not unless we rethink what fairness looks like.
The people who deliver our mail, raise our kids, serve our food, clean up our disasters — those people deserve more than grit and thanks. They deserve functioning systems that don’t abandon them the second they need help.
Until then, we’re just playing pretend with the word “equal.”
