Even more musings, still not enough

You're walking around with a friend or two, real late, after dark downtown.  It's not the best neighborhood.  A nice car pulls up to the intersection a few feet from you, and you hear a faint "click, click."  What it is?

I was talking to a high school teacher friend of mine who told me she asks her students this when she teaches the biography of a black woman who lived from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement.

The white kids always say "I don't know... a gun?"

But the black kids just stay quiet.

She has to ask them individually, but then they'll answer.

"It's the car doors locking." 

I was still thinking that I really was only seeing race this semester because it didn't matter to me before.  But maybe it didn't matter because I wasn't getting the short end of the stick.  It still amazes me how hard it is to break away from my own vantage point.  Can it even be done?