In this video, part of a series from Teen Vogue, middle school students tell how they feel about attitudes toward race and white privilege. “We went out to dinner and we had to pay in advance.”

Last month, Teen Vogue made waves again with its profile of Johnetta Elzie, one of the young leaders to come out of Ferguson, MO in the wake of Michael Brown’s death.

Are we doing everything we can to create spaces in which we can acknowledge and address the systemic racism that people of color face in this country?