I broke some glass in my kitchen a few weeks ago. One of those frustrating moments when the item simply slips from your hands and shatters. I did my best to clean it up. I swept, wiped, vacuumed, got down on my hands and knees and inspected the floor. I have a crawler in my house and I was worried about his soft, pink knees coming into contact with even the smallest shard. 

A few days later I was walking barefoot in the kitchen when I stepped on a small but sharp bit of glass. It had escaped my copious search and saved its bite for my unsuspecting step. As I was picking out the compact bit of pain from my foot I thought about other broken glass in my life. 

When I was still a student doing my rotations to become a Physician Assistant, I was working on the south side of Chicago. It was my second office that I had worked for in this area. The first one I had enjoyed so much that they offered to help me find another position in the community. I accepted gratefully. 

It was a few weeks in and someone came into the office to say that there was a car in the parking lot that had been broken into. After a description of the car I realized it was mine. I grabbed my car keys and rushed outside. It was spring but still felt like winter, as it often does in Chicago. Sure enough my driver's side window was smashed. Glass covering the front seat. Items that had been inside the car now gone. 

I walked back inside the office stunned. The clear film of safety, that I had not even recognized I assumed was around me, ripped. Everyone in the office stood there for a moment and then one of my coworkers said to me “you’ve never had your car broken into before?”. There was no sympathy. There was no shock. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this community. I was what was unordinary. Me and my privilege were the visitors to their reality. 

The thing about broken glass is it’s hard to see. But just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you when stepped upon. Just like broken glass, racism can be hard to see in ourselves but still draw blood on impact. 

We are in a phase of sweeping up the glass in this country. We are recognizing that the work some of us thought was done, hasn’t been completed. There are still shards of hurt hiding in the world, hardest for privileged eyes to see. Just yesterday I dropped another bottle. This time the glass that broke was a shade of green. Easier to see. Easier to find the stray pieces. Easier to clean up. And yet I still wait for a small pinch at my heel. A tiny drop of blood, from a covert and stubborn piece of glass. Each time we talk about race inequality it may become easier to see, but it will still be hard to clean up.