Read piece✮Can Black Boys Cry?: The Shadow of Mass Incarceration. #HuffingtonPost ✮ ✐ RIP #MikeBrown #TrayvonMartin and #JordanDavis-- “Excerpt: Where do black boys like Mike Brown, Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin cry? Where can they be children that play, laugh and joke as they learn their way in this world? When can they be a victim not only of bullets, but also of a society that has deemed them as men before their time by virtue of their skin and gender? Black men like Jordan Davis do not have childhoods. After puberty they lose so much of their innocence and begin their descent into the shadow of our nations mass incarceration. huffingtonpost/2014/02/25/trayvon-martin-jordan-davis_n_4855746.html America as a nation has become a tale of two cities: one for young black men and one essentially for everyone else. While we can argue with this blanket statement, what cannot be refuted is that young black men are one of the most imprisoned groups in modern history. African-American men comprise a mere 6% of the American population, but according to the Department of Justice, they make up nearly half of the 2 million inmates in U.S. jails or prisons. These men are largely imprisoned for non-violent offenses. According to the U.S. census, nearly half of America’s 19 million black men are under the age of 35 years old, and the ratio for young black male imprisonment is around 10 percent, or 10,000 prisoners per 100,000. (Note: This is not counting the additional numbers on parole, or on probation, which add significantly to these numbers.) Placing this ratio in context, as of today, India, a country of 1 billion people, only has about 300,000 prisoners, a ratio of 30 prisoners per 100,000 people. During South African apartheid, one of the most horrific instances of racism the world has seen, the prison rate for black male South Africans, under immensely unfair laws, was 851 per 100,000. In America today, young black men face a rate of imprisonment effectively ten times that number. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” - #MartinLutherKingJr -- READ AND SHARE -huffingtonpost/…/trayvon-martin-jordan-davis… The consequence of these statistics on African American social development reaches far beyond prisons into community, public perception and family. It is here, in the shadow of mass incarceration that Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin and the majority of young black males are forced to exist. In a nation built by our forefathers sweat and free labor, we are left to look like and feel like crimeless felons. While we can look closer at music, clothes and other additives that inflate the perception society may have of young black boys, if you don’t start at the heart you cannot even put a dent into the problem. Where do black boys like Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin cry? #Ferguson #PresidentBarackObama
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:08:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015