Last night, I started watching the Netflix 4-episode series When They See Us, which documents the Central Park Five incident that happened in the late 80s in New York, where five Black and Latino teens were (wrongly) convicted of raping and beating a white female jogger. Although I knew the story at a high level, I read more about it last summer, around the time this series came out on Netflix, because it was discussed during Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show. At that time, I actually had no idea this incident had occurred.

I only got through one episode, but it was hard and painful to get through. To think that kids can be tried as adults… what… simply because they are Black or Latino, is just beyond comprehension, that people in the legal system can force children of color to admit to wrongdoing that they haven’t even committed is just disgusting. The justice system in this country is unjust; there’s nothing that works in favor of people of color. It’s even worse to think that the original prosecutor who worked on this case, to this day, still thinks she was justified in all she did, is even more hideous, especially given that DNA tests showed that none of these five kids actually committed the rape. Her justification for this? She said they weren’t only guilty of rape, that they committed other crimes.

Wow. Not everyone learns from their mistakes or is even willing to admit to making mistakes. And that’s what is wrong with society, and in this case, white society.