America has given up on young Black men, like Trayvon Martin
By Phillip Jackson, The Black Star Project
June 15, 2013
Trayvon Martin is more valuable to America as a dead young Black man than he ever was alive! As a dead symbol, the president can claim him as a son he never had, but as a living Black man, the American criminal justice system claims one out of three young Black men born after 2001.
As a dead symbol, Republicans can claim that Trayvon deserves his right to live as an American; but many living young Black men, like Trayvon, are stripped of their rights every day because of harsh, racially-targeted and overly-punitive laws created by and pushed by Republicans.
Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, reminds us that more Black men are in prison today than there were Blacks enslaved in America in 1850. She suggests that we have not really ended Jim Crow, but have just given it another name - the criminal justice system. We can also call it the education system or the economic system, but they all equate to a new system of racial control of Black Americans, just like Jim Crow.
