In English we've been talking about reparations regarding slavery. Should Blacks get money for the pain their ancestors went through? Should the President offer a public apology? Some people think it's absurd that we today as a society should be feeling guilty for something that took place over a hundred years ago. It's not like any of us had a hand in it, and it's not like any of the slaves are alive today. On the other hand, we should be doing all we can to fill in the gaps between white and black. After all, it is partly our discrimination towards them that has landed many of them in the poor economic situation many blacks are in now. I'm not pitying them or blaming any one group of people for everything. But lately I have been volunteering my Fridays in what I would consider the ghetto, at an after school program for kids whose parents are on the verge of being homeless. The families live in tenaments and there's a small playground the kids play on everyday after school. "School" is a one room building with some games, a single computer, and an assortment of toys. Last week was my first time there. I was nervous. I had never been to an actual ghetto. Where I was from, there were four black kids in my entire school. None of us knew what it was like to be on the verge of losing our homes. None of us questioned where the money would come from to go to college or whether we had enough to buy a prom dress or rent a limo. We arrived at 3:30. The whole place was fenced in and there was barbed wire surrounding the perimeter of the tenament. Beyond were dilapidated houses and people who looked like they should be on a rap video or something. I was scared. I'm probably as white as they come. How would these kids respond to me?

We walked up to the playground. All the kids screamed and came running towards us. They hugged me and clung onto me even though they had never seen me before. They begged me to play games with them. They wanted me to be their "partner" for hiding when we played hide and go seek. They didn't want me to leave when it was time for all of the volunteers to go home. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, that when it comes to all this reparations crap, sorry just doesn't cut it. When I was little, sorry didn't get me out of anything. Now whether or not these kids had ancestors who were enslaved shouldn't matter. All these kids wanted was attention. They wanted to learn. They wanted someome to teach them things and watch them practice their dance moves. And damn, can they dance. These kids are truly overlooked by society. As I was playing Conect Four with one little black kid, I wondered if he'd be in jail by the time he was 21. I looked at his surroundings and his living conditions and thought to myself, how can the ambitions of even the most optimistic child survive this?

Maybe these kids and reparations have nothing to do with one another, but in my mind they do. If there's one thing we should be doing to improve anything in this country it should be to make sure that no child has to live in a tenament when kids like me grew up with hundreds of computers readily available in school. Kids are truly the answer, and the only way we can get anything done is by reaching them first. The kids I ran around with in a playground enclosed by barbed wire fence are just as eager and willing and excited about life as the little kids who run rampant on Halloween in my small suburban town. Being in South Carolina has really taught me a lot about other parts of the country and has made me realize how good I really have it. It's also taught me that in no way are we created equal. I've got all the cards stacked in my favor. I'm in college, I'm not poor, I'm white. But these kids might never pull themselves out of the ditch they have been born into, and it isn't fair. It's not the kind of fair like someone ahead of you gets the last chocolate bar in stock, but fair like the kind that should make the President drop what he is doing and come see for himself how people are really living. It has been said time and time again that we need to take care of ourselves before we can go take on the world. I have always agreed with that, but now I have seen it firsthand and I couldn't be more adiment about it. I think I want to build a school when I grow up.