Vengeance isn't justice, and it doesn't bring lasting change. That's what I'm telling myself and what I'm teaching my kids.

The process matters and steps can’t be skipped, even when we're dealing with an act as loathsome as Derek Chauvin putting his knee in George Floyd’s neck.

That’s what I keep telling myself, at least.

There’s another side of me that wants to scream and demand Chauvin get the death penalty. There’s a side of me that wants his execution to be public and for it to last for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. And there’s a side of me that doesn’t think we need a trial for a crime we all saw.

But I refuse to compromise who I am or what I believe over a man who would kill over a $20 bill and the racists who would defend his decision to do so.

I’m better than that.

An eye for an eye isn’t justice; it’s vengeance, and it doesn’t bring lasting change.

The Chauvin trial has been progressive in countless ways, and it’s proving that activism can change the system.

I think about my grandfather's world It’s important for me to remember that each and every time my blood boils thinking of what my grandfather must have seen growing up in rural Alabama in the 1920s and ’30s.

He would have known about the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping a pair of white women on a train.

From accusation to conviction, their initial trial took only weeks. They were found guilty by all-white juries in a town that had been flooded by thousands of people interested in a lynching.

It took decades for them all to be exonerated, many posthumously.

I also think of what my granddad would have thought about Emmett Till, a teenage boy lynched over the accusation that he had flirted with a white woman.

events. He would have been a young man in 1955, when Emmett was kidnapped, beaten, disfigured, shot, tied to a heavy chunk of metal with barbed wire and tossed into a river to die.

The men accused were found not guilty by an all-white jury.

My granddad had a son at the time. What must have been going through his mind when he thought about the future for his baby boy or any other sons he might have?

My father and I have seen cities burn On April 5, 2021, in Minneapolis. That makes me think of my own father.

He grew up with these stories. He was a teenager when America burned in the race riots of 1968. He was a father when Los Angeles burned in 1992.

The Rodney King beating was broadcast much like Floyd’s death. The officers involved were acquitted, and people were angry.

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Now, it’s my turn

As an adult, I’ve seen Ferguson and Baltimore burn. I saw the massive uprising around the nation last summer after Floyd’s death.

I’m watching to see what comes next, but I’m thinking about my children.

Regardless of the outcome, this trial has highlighted divisions in our society that go back to generations. It’s hard to explain all of that to them. The twins are in grade school. Their sisters sleep in pullups and Pampers.

They still have questions, and while I refuse to lie to them or gloss over our nation’s history of racism, I also refuse to allow them to grow up with hate and bitterness as a starting place.

What I'll tell my kids when they ask

So, I’m ready, the next time they ask, to tell them about the reality that Chauvin was fired and that he’s on trial. That doesn’t always happen when police are accused of brutality against Black people. These are important steps toward justice.

I’m ready to tell them there are Black people on the jury. Only half of the Chauvin jury is white. That hasn’t always been the case, and it’s a shift away from racism.

I’m ready to tell them that police are testifying that what they saw is not who they are or what they represent. There has been no “thin blue line” of silence, and officers aren’t acting like members of some omerta-bound criminal gang.

That is as it should be. Police have to be better than the best of us, and those officers testifying against Chauvin are upholding that.

Find a rope, get a tree: That's the sorry history of lynching, not the justice we need now

I’ll also be telling my kids that there is plenty of work yet to do.

We need more Black judges and lawyers.

We need more police and criminal justice reform.

And we need better public education and employment opportunities.

Most of all, we need more trust.

We can't skip steps in this process This trial represents so much of what’s wrong with our nation. It’s entirely possible that we can make certain that it represents what’s right with the nation, as well.

It’ll take hard work, regardless of the outcome.

But that’s OK because the process matters and steps can’t be skipped, especially when we’re trying to reform a system that creates an atrocity as loathsome as Derek Chauvin putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck.

It’s important to remember that each and every time my blood boils thinking of what the generations that came before me had to endure.

Vengeance isn’t justice, and it doesn’t bring lasting change.

That’s what I’m telling myself, and it’s what I’m teaching my kids.