White Privilege on a Dead End Street
We were several cars parked side by side on a newly built cul-de-sac. We had planned to meet here for a party. We were a group of thirty teenagers. We were all white. We had all parked our cars facing away from the dead end and back toward the tree lined road we had just entered from. Most of us were not eighteen yet, which was the legal drinking age at the time, but our cars were loaded with coolers of beer. The road that we were on was part of a new wave of development that had begun on the lake where we lived. Local developers had begun buying land on or near the lake and building small neighborhoods of a dozen or so houses. This one was a little larger with one road splitting into three cul-de-sacs and would probably end up with about 30 or more houses. The roads were complete and even had curbing in place, but not a single house was under construction yet. The closest homes were not visible from where we were parked, but we knew they were just around the corner. We knew lots o...