When I was 17 and in my last of a string of foster homes (and one of the few GOOD foster homes, I might add!), I was having a conversation with my foster parents, whom I was just beginning to know.

Over the last few years, we had both experienced personal loss. They had lost a son, I had lost a brother that my siblings and I had spent a great deal of time helping to raise. When my foster mother discussed losing her son, I said I understood because I had lost a brother.

This upset her greatly, because, as she said, nobody who hasn't lost a child can truly understand the emotions involved, no matter how they try.

And you know what? She was right. Although I didn't understand it at the time, it's true. But it's equally true that nobody who hasn't opened the morning paper to see that their 4 1/2 year old half brother was sodomized and murdered by his father can understand THAT feeling, either. There was the guilt of leaving my mother's to live with my dad, causing the state to intervene and force my mother to send my half brother to stay with his dad for a six month period, there was the guilt of being a survivor, and finally, there was the universal guilt of words not said and things not done. Put that all together, and it's a hell of an emotional cross for a 17 year old to bear.

Philomedy wrote a piece explaining how whites can't understand racism. And again, he was right. I have not CONSISTENTLY walked in the shoes of someone whose physical appearance marks them as distinctly different from the majority of society in a way that a haircut or a new wardrobe can't change. But I HAVE lived in a world where there is a "right" and a "wrong side of the tracks, and where mannerisms and verbiage often betray your social class. The verbiage differentiation I've been able to largely overcome; not so the mannerisms.

And so, no matter how much I fancy myself up, there is a class of people to whom I will always be "white trash" (see my piece about the hate mail). So, in a small way I understand, while it's true that I don't "understand" in the larger sense.

There's an old, tired cliche about walking a mile in another's mocassins. It applies to this situation.