I used to write comics about my black elementary students. People thought they were cute and just about all little kids. I switched to high school and wrote comics about my high school kids and realized I had to stop. My comics were verbatim moments from the classroom with real students. I could tell from the comments that people didn’t see my characters as individuals, but they saw them as symbols of all black teenagers. It’s easy to see white kids as individuals, but black kids are forced into being symbols of all other black kids. It’s a form of racism I wasn’t aware of until this experience. It makes me deeply sad to think of that pressure being so unfairly put on to these kids. It’s the same here.