I see my face in the news a lot. Not just people who look like me, but people I’m convinced I almost was.

I don’t know why or how, but of the many people I could have been, I ended up being me. This isn’t about me though, this is about who I almost was and who I couldn’t be.

One of the people I almost was is named Joseph Chamblin. He was filmed pissing on the bodies of Taliban soldiers he had killed in Afghanistan in 2011. After he was punished, he said, given the opportunity, he would do it again.

One of the people I almost was is named Darren Wilson. He murdered Mike Brown and left him in the street.

Someone who I almost was is named Dylan Roof. He killed too. If I had been Dylan Roof I would have walked into a church and killed nine people in the hopes of starting a race war.

Speaking of race wars, I could have been Peter Cvjetanovic, the UNR Nazi. You might not recognize the name, but you know the face. It has been immortalized, mid shout, in the glow of a torchlit march through Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017. One day before Heather Heyer was murdered.

Or I simply could have been the cat I always see skateboarding around downtown Eugene in a hoody with confederate flag motif. Your everyday store brand racist. He probably won’t commit an atrocity, but he’ll vote for people who do.

What is different about them than me? If I saw them and didn’t know who they were, I could probably assume their lives were relatively like mine. Let’s see, I’m white, I was raised by a single parent. I considered myself “smart-but-didn’t-apply-myself” in high school. I spent time online a lot as a kid. I was conservative by default as a youth. I was fucking racist by default as a kid, that same store brand racism you get from your aunt locking the car doors as a Mexican person uses the crosswalk at the red light she’s stopped at. I was perfectly comfortable with the United States’s institutional racism. How much of that could be different from them?

You know who I couldn’t have possibly been? I couldn’t have been Bree Newsome. I don’t have the fearlessnesss with which she scaled the flagpole at the capitol building in South Carolina to tear down their confederate flag.

I could never have been Sandra Bland. I don’t have her passion, for which she was murdered in jail for promising to fight the police in court after they unlawfully detained, no sorry, that should say fucking kidnapped, her. I mean, I’m the least likely to be harassed by the police, but when I get pulled over it’s not exactly “yes, sir” and “no, sir,” but I’m not bumping NWA, either.

I don’t have the ability to articulate like Mumia Abu-Jamal or the ability to fire people up like Zach DeLa Rocha.

So, yeah, I’ve improved a lot. And, yeah, I could have turned out a lot worse. The question remains though, how much better could I be? How much more could I do?