I'm a young Black man who used to oppose Black Lives Matter

Johnan Sowah poses with friends ahead of their Homecoming dance in September 2012 in a handout phototgraph.

I’m a young Black man who used to be opposed to Black Lives Matter. I used to feel that because I hadn’t personally faced blatant racism in my life, then such a thing couldn’t be part of the Black narrative in America today.          

I grew up in the northern Virginia suburbs, where most of my friends were white and Asian. I didn’t have any Black friends at all until I left for college at 17, and I was unable to imagine why one would ever be skeptical of law enforcement.