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In “Color of conscience,” junior Leah Johnson comes to terms with her identity as both a black woman and as an American. “I think a lot of times humanity is lost between people because we don’t identify shared experiences.”
Color of conscience By Leah Johnson | leadjohn@indiana.edu | @byleahjohnson
In the days after Ferguson, when the tear gas clouded the city, I burned with an anger I knew too well. “Here goes another one,” I told my roommates. Amadou Diallo. Trayvon Martin. Kendrec McDade. Oscar Grant. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Now Michael Brown’s name had been added to the list of stolen black lives. As I watched the footage of protesters staring down the armored vehicles, I could barely sit still. I was angry at the police for shooting down another unarmed black teenager and leaving his body in the street for four hours. At TV commentators for calling Brown a thug. At myself for feeling powerless, for not getting in my car and driving to Missouri to join the protests. Every time I got on Facebook and Twitter, I encountered white people who would never understand. They said that a black man’s election to the White House proved that racism was over in this country. They insisted that Brown’s death was not racial, that the protesters shouldn’t be complaining. How dare these people dictate to us what was and was not justifiable rage? “Walk 400 years in our shoes,” said a friend of mine, “and then see if you have to ask why our feet hurt.” * * * The two sides of my identity are at
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war. I’m an American, so the justice system is designed to protect me. But I’m a black person, too, which means that same justice system is killing me. For years, I have struggled to reconcile this dual identity. W.E.B. DuBois called it double consciousness. In “The Souls of Black Folks,” DuBois puts it like this: “It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Where, then, does that leave me? I’m 20 years old, and I’m already tired. * * * My backstory is not tragic. The fact is, I grew up in a bubble. I was born and raised on the west side of Indianapolis, in a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood, not far from the Speedway, nestled
safely between the suburbs and the hood. The bubble wasn’t just geographic. My mother, whose dad was in the Army, had spent much of her life outside of the continental United States and had barely experienced the racial tensions of the 1960s and 1970s. As I grew up, race wasn’t a huge part of the family dialogue. Mom told me that on a military base, folks rarely saw color. They were all too busy just trying to get by. That was the way I learned to see the world, without the need to divide everything into black and white. I was proud of being African-American, but it didn’t define me. I knew that I was more than the color of my skin. My real education on how the rest of the world saw race began during my senior year of high school. I was 17, and my best friends and I were hunting for prom dresses. We drove to a nearby neighborhood, cushier than ours, to visit a shop called Bare Necessities Bridal. We walked in, the only customers in the store, excited to be together and to try on fancy dresses. I was determined to find something that made me look like Gabrielle Union. I didn’t usually dress
Learn the story behind the story Reporter Leah Johnson takes viewers through her hopes, concerns and fears during the reporting of this project. Watch at idsnews.com. up, but when I made my entrance at the prom, I wanted to be a dime – a 10, you know. That was my end game. A white-haired woman, super old to my teenage eyes, sat on a stool near the back. She didn’t greet us. She didn’t speak a word until 10 minutes later, when I picked up a white dress that looked just like the gown Hilary Duff wore in “A Cinderella Story.” The woman walked toward me and eased the dress out of my hands. “Don’t you want to try on something else — something less SEE JOHNSON, PAGE 3
2 arrests made in robberies By Andy Wittry and Holly Hays region@idsnews.com
Two arrests have been made in the strong-armed rob- Seymour bery reported early Thursday morning at the Circle K gas station and convenience store at about 12:19 a.m., according to a press release from Bloomington
Police Department Captain Joe Qualters. Police have arrested a suspect, Shawn M. Seymour, age 19, on preliminary charges of two counts of armed robbery, a level 3 felony. Additionally, he was charged with one count of resisting law enforcement, which is a level 6 felony. Those preliminary charges
include the Thursday morning robbery at a Circle K gas station, located at 4405 E. Third St., and a Marathon Gas Station located at West Third Street and Curry Pike. Paul C. Spence, age 18, was arrested on preliminary charges of two counts of armed robbery in the same incidents as Seymour. Spence was identified as the SEE ROBBERY, PAGE 8
IU alert did not include location From IDS reports
An IU Notify alert sent early Thursday morning contained the notification system’s first error, IU police said. The system sends emails, texts and makes phone calls to IU faculty, staff and students in emergencies. Family members can
also add their contact information to the system. Thursday morning, IU Police Department officials sent three messages concerning an armed robbery at a Circle K gas station located at 4405 E. Third St. One of the email message subjects read: “DANGEROUS SITUATION - INSERT LOCATION” at
about 2:10 a.m. IU Police Department Lt. Craig Munroe said this is the first time he has seen an error occur in an alert. “That was human error,“ he said. “When the individual was doing it other things were also SEE ALERT, PAGE 8