'WTF is this crap'? Is TPM's take on #McKinney the stupidest one yet?

Sarah D. | 4:02 PM on June 09, 2015

Today’s hot take has been brought to you by the letters T, P, and M:

Playing, a luxury of childhood, is becoming unmistakably intertwined with white privilege. http://t.co/4N4cnIZ1et pic.twitter.com/tAeUIdF1GN

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) June 9, 2015

OK, our curiosity has gotten the better of us. We’ll bite:

Toward the end of many days last summer, with my boys home from camp and still needing to expend their youthful energy, they would run outside and play war games with their remarkably authentic-looking squirt guns. As they roamed the nearby yards and streets in my Waltham, MA apartment complex, I never for a moment feared that someone would call 911 and report them as threatening men with guns, never worried that an arriving police officer might shoot first and ask questions later (if at all).

At the center of the complex is a small community pool to which I’m a member and at which many of the complex’s kids spend a good bit of their summers. It’s an easy walk from my townhouse, and the boys will be old enough this summer that I anticipate sending them down the street to the pool ahead of or even without me sometimes, letting them experience another summertime pleasure that I remember from my youth at the pool near my home. In contemplating this summer plan, I’m not at all concerned that they will be treated as part of a dangerous youthful mob, will have guns drawn on them by overreacting police officers.

…

I, like my sons today, did these sorts of things as a young person: played with toy guns, got out of hand at the pool sometimes, acted like a boy. Being a kid is (or should be) one of our society’s most privileged positions, and there are few privileges of childhood more meaningful than the opportunity to play without worries, to enjoy a summer day on its own relaxed terms. This childhood luxury is becoming painfully, unmistakably intertwined with white privilege.