Requiem for a DREAM
(Why Trayvon Matters so much)
Last night driving home from work I listened to the local right-wing radio jockey stir up anguish in his nearly all white audience on the Trayvon Martin verdict. I was amazed at the level of bravado with which callers waxed poetic, philosophical and with indignant rage about the primacy of the criminal justice system and the sanctity of “the process”. I was reminded of a professor of political science many years ago who, in his examination of 20th century political movements shared the idea that: “having an ideology means never having to say you’re sorry.” These were folks defending a system which produces a dissonance that is simply too loud to ignore; while figuratively standing over the body of a 17 year old boy. Trayvon Martin is just the latest young martyr of institutional racism that will haunt us all until we can look truthfully at the system in which:
- While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.
- According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime.
- Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated.
- According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students are arrested far more often than their white classmates.
- African American youth have higher rates of juvenile incarceration and are more likely to be sentenced to adult prison.
- As the number of women incarcerated has increased by 800 percent over the last three decades, women of color have been disproportionately represented.
- The war on drugs has been waged primarily in communities of color where people of color are more likely to receive higher offenses.
- Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders.
- Voter laws that prohibit people with felony convictions to vote disproportionately impact men of color.
- Studies have shown that people of color face disparities in wage trajectory following release from prison.
Source: Center for American Progress
The system of Justice, which produces this reality, in fact, perpetuates and protects injustice. But it can only do so with the explicit consent of those that continue to validate it. Please stop. To defend these outcomes; to defend this empirical reality is tantamount to defending an explicit doctrine of racial superiority. For if you defend as “Just” and “Impartial” a system that produces and perpetuates this reality how can you escape the conclusion that these results, which produce such regular disparities, are anything other than a measure of the implicit inferiority of those for whom the systemic results are so negative?
I did not follow the Zimmerman trial closely. The technical aspects of trials are always the key in the process. I have no problem believing that per the process a jury would find George Zimmerman "not guilty." I don’t know if he is a racist and I don’t care. The verdict is the process of a machine which is tainted and which favors the perpetuation of a society in which people of color do not have equal justice. That system then, is what must change. I am not simply talking about the criminal justice system, but a comprehensive system of racial superiority which is so embedded that otherwise reasonable people will defend the validity of that system even in the face of overwhelming and consistent empirical evidence of racial bias.
It’s time to stop. Yes I am a man of color, and yes I am biased; in favor of my own survival and the survival of my children. I am biased in favor of their ability to be seen and treated as equals. I am biased in favor of the dreams and aspirations of the students of color that I am privileged to serve, who deserve to be treated every bit as precious and beautiful as the white classmates that they stand beside. They are all precious and beautiful. Your criminal justice system is not just to me. The evidence is overwhelming. People of Color are reacting in response to this verdict to communicate exactly this fact and the empirical evidence has told you this over and over. We are reaching that incendiary point at which the benign neglect about the continuation of this situation is starting to look more and more like a malicious design.
