Why the Post-Trayvon Martin “Talk" Turns Black Kids Into a Pathology

by Pascal Robert

“Black children do not need to adjust to be viewed and treated as human beings.”

After the horrendous miscarriage of justice from the Trayvon Martin verdict became known to America, the Black community began to engage in another humiliating spectacle of self-flagellation that was joined in by even the putrid representative of the Obama Administration's Justice Department, Eric Holder:

"Trayvon's death last spring caused me to sit down to have a conversation with my own 15 year old son, like my dad did with me. This was a father-son tradition I hoped would not need to be handed down. But as a father who loves his son and who is more knowing in the ways of the world, I had to do this to protect my boy. I am his father and it is my responsibility, not to burden him with the baggage of eras long gone, but to make him aware of the world he must still confront. This is a sad reality in a nation that is changing for the better in so many ways."

This insipid, self-defeating discourse about the "The Talk" started circulating around the media and internet, including among the increasingly worthless Black Media Elite who usually fawn over the Obama administration.

Less than a month after the Trayvon Martin verdict, the White House signaled a desire to appoint New York City's Ray Kelly, a key advocate of the horridly racist Stop and Frisk policy that was recently found unconstitutional by a Federal Court, to head the Department of Homeland Security. This is the same Obama administration that opposed retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act to currently incarcerated drug offenders, many of whom are Black men, to the complete dismay of advocates for a fair criminal justice system. In recent days, Holder appears to have zigged in the other direction, endorsing a restructuring of mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. But again, the worthless Black chattering class like Obama's MSNBC acolytes will fail to highlight his administration's consistent treachery and duplicity on issues of race and the criminal justice system and claim Holder's current posture as some validation of Obama's dedication to racial justice – a gross distortion of reality.

What is wrong with telling your Black and Brown children to act according to the "racial reality" in a post-Trayvon Martin world?

“This conversation is about pathologizing Black and Brown children for being victims of a racist society.”

Quite simply, the whole tone of these conversations illustrates how wrongly Black and Brown people confront the reality of the structurally racist society we live in. This conversation is about pathologizing Black and Brown children for being victims of a racist society. “The Talk” attempts to “debrief” our kids on the necessity to attenuate their behavior to the expectations of a racist society. The underlying assumption is that the racist gaze must be adjusted to because it is the normative standard, and must be acknowledged as such for survival.

The whole sick ritual is innately enfeebling. The normal functioning of children is deemed a pathology that demands adjustment, while the racist system and those who empathize with George Zimmerman are treated as normative.

The conversation that needs to be had with Black children would explain to them that the system and its gatekeepers are the ones that are sick and immoral. Black children do not need to adjust to be viewed and treated as human beings, because the system will never do so no matter how much they try – not until it is forced to change. The system must be exposed as innately inhumane, corrupt, vile, and unworthy of respect and reverence.

Blacks are less likely to use marijuana than whites, yet are four times more likely to face prosecution for marijuana offenses according to a recent New York Times report. Such statistics can be found in a variety of other criminal offenses. Black and Brown children are not a pathology; our criminal justice system and this racist society are the pathologies. We should give our children the intellectual armor to call out this injustice instead of kowtowing to it. If such conversations actually kept Black children safe we would expect a significant decrease in these types of racist murders, post-Trayvon. Such a notion is ridiculous. Racial injustice doesn't diminish because you tell the victim to better acquaint himself to it. It stops when victims are infused with a discipline telling them to fight the system and stand up for their rights. It's time to stop turning our children into a pathology and let the criminal justice system and society know that they are the ones that are pathological.

Pascal Robert is an Iconoclastic Haitian American Lawyer, Blogger, and Online Activist for Haiti. For years his work appeared under the Blog Thought Merchant: http://thoughtmerchant.wordpress.com/ He can be reached via twitter at: https://twitter.com/probert06 @probert06 or thoughtmerchant@gmail.com.

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