Last week’s Dropout Nation Podcast on the need to reform American public education for the young men whose futures are slaughtered the way Trayvon Martin was murdered hit a raw nerve, especially with education traditionalists who would rather ignore reality than deal with the consequences of policies that perpetuate systemic academic failure. But it isn’t just education traditionalists alone. Far too often, we are too unwilling to consider how everyone in communities — including families — do not do enough to help staunch the decay of communities that comes from young men and women being poorly educated, and the tolerance of violence that perpetuates more damage.
In this Voices of the Dropout Nation, Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project provides his own body count of how low-quality education and civic decay has led to so many young black men being condemned to poverty and prison. Read, consider, and take action.
Trayvon Martin is more valuable to America as a dead young black man then 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, Republican presidential candidates 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.
Many in America know how to use the symbol of a dead young black man to achieve its objectives. When symbols are used correctly, the nation cleanses its conscience while the deplorable plight of young Black men remain the same. As a dead symbol, Trayvon might spark a national conversation on race. But as a living young Black man, Trayvon probably couldn’t get a job at a fast-food restaurant.
No place in America is this stark contradiction of symbol versus reality for young Black men more evident than in Chicago, Illinois. While hundreds of people in Chicago protested the death of Trayvon Martin, few people protested the violent murders of more than 100 mostly young black males in Chicago in the past year, mostly at the hands of other young black men. Chicago media, foundations and elected officials have ignored the blood of black children running in Chicago streets while they congratulate those who speak in symbolic terms about race in America.
Chicago is ground-zero for the destruction of young black men in America! Here, only three out of 100 Black male high-school freshmen will graduate from college by age 25, according to the Consortium for Chicago School Research. Just 44 percent of young black men in Chicago will graduate from high school. Last summer, approximately 90 percent of Chicago’s young Black males 16 to 19 years old were unemployed, according to Northeastern University. And young black men in Chicago are arrested at two-to-six times the rates of other populations.
As dire as this crisis is, there are solutions, but they are not in symbols or soul-searching. They are comprehensive and substantial efforts and actions to ameliorate this stain on America’s reputation for fairness and equality.
Everyone, from families to governments, foundations, churches, and community organizations must do their part. It means rebuilding black families with fathers as an essential, prominent and functional component of the family structure. They must provide mentors, positive role models and viable paths for young Black men. They must reform education so that young black men can have an education they can value and be part of the global economy. And they must teach young Black men about how to succeed in entrepreneurship and in the working world.
The death of Trayvon Martin is a symbol of the plight of young black men in America — and its one to which most Americans can relate. But we ca longer be comfortable with young black men being symbols, or as in the case of Martin Luther King and Trayvon, being loved by society after they are dead. We must become comfortable with strong, vocal, positive black men who are educated and alive.