Back in 1903, in his groundbreaking book The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois argued that the defining element of African-American life was being viewed as a perpetual problem–one’s very existence as a problem to be dealt with, managed and controlled but never solved. More than 100 years later, DuBois’ rhetorical question seems as relevant as ever: How does it feel to be a problem?

There is a profound difference, of course, between having problems–which all people are allowed–and being a problem. One of the reasons that Trayvon Martin’s tragic death resonated so powerfully with millions of people of color, black and brown men in particular, is that it was one of those rare situations in this so-called era of colorblindness when suddenly the curtain was pulled back. All the usual rationalizations for routinely treating young black men as problems and up to no good, were stripped away. There was just a young teenager on the phone with a girl, carrying a bag of Skittles and an iced tea, and he was viewed for no logical reason as scary, out of place, on drugs–someone who needs to be confronted, interrogated and put in place.

Our criminal-justice system has for decades been infected with a mind-set that views black boys and men in particular as a problem to be dealt with, managed and controlled. This mind-set has fueled a brutal war on drugs, a get-tough movement and a prison-building boom unprecedented in world history.

Today, millions of people of color are stopped, interrogated and frisked as they are walking to school, driving to church or heading home from the store. In 2011 alone, the New York City police department stopped and frisked more than 600,000 people. The overwhelming majority were black and brown men who were innocent of any crime or infraction. Their mere existence was cause for concern, just as the sight of Trayvon Martin walking leisurely through his own neighborhood was enough to make George Zimmerman call the police.

Studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, yet black people have been arrested and incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates during the 40-year-old war on drugs. If people who abuse illegal drugs were viewed as people who have real problems–rather than people who are problems–then drug treatment would be the obvious and rational response rather than putting people struggling with addiction in cages, treating them like animals and stamping them with a lifelong badge of inferiority.

Once released from prison, most people find that their punishment is far from over. Felons are typically stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. They’re relegated to a permanent undercaste. Unable to find work or housing, most wind up back in prison within a few years. Black men with criminal records are the most severely disadvantaged group in the labor market. In some places, more than 50% of people are in this demographic.

Research shows that racial disparities in violent crime disappear when you control for joblessness. Unemployed men of all races are equally likely to be violent, particularly if they are chronically without work. But rather than viewing high levels of violent crime in ghettoized communities as a symptom of the deeper economic and social ills, black men and boys are viewed as the problem itself and treated accordingly. Jobs are promised but almost never delivered, and schools are allowed to fail as ever bigger prisons are built to manage “the problem.”

Trayvon Martin will not be the last black boy who dies or goes to jail or gives up on his life because he was viewed and treated as nothing but a problem. We are all guilty of being too quiet for too long. Let it be said hereafter that we were quiet no more.

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Alexander, a civil rights lawyer, is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

 (Credit: Shutterstock)

 

On Friday, President Obama gave a personal, emotional speech about the killing on Trayvon Martin, in which he spoke extensively on the broader issue of race in the United States. 

Obama addressed the experiences of racial profiling that are all to common for Black men. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store,” Obama said. “That includes me. And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator.”

“The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws,” Obama said, “everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

There’s no need to examine, anecdote by anecdote, whether Obama is right about this. It doesn’t take a single case, like the case of 17-year-old Martin, to make the President’s point; there is a lot of data already on the boooks to substantiate his claims. Here are just a few charts that make Obama’s point:

 

1. Justified killings of Black people under ‘Stand Your Ground.’ PBS’s Frontline made this instructive chart on the way that defendants who invoke ‘Stand Your Ground’ — the policy that allowed George Zimmerman to walk free on the night that he killed Trayvon Martin — fare. PBS explains, “The figures represent the percentage likelihood that the deaths will be found justifiable compared to white-on-white killings.” The result? A huge racial disparity of when the defense works — and when it doesn’t:

 

 Credit: Frontline

 

2. Stop-and-Frisks of young Black men. In May, the Public Advocate for New York put out a report detailing the way that the city’s controversial ‘Stop-and-Frisk policy is unevenly applied. Not only did it find that Blacks and Latinos make up, on average, 85 percent of stops under the program, but it also conveyed exactly how skewed those numbers are compared to the city’s demographics:

 Credit: New York Public Advocate Bill de Blasio

 

3. Drug arrests for White and Black users. The number of White drug users is about the same as the number of Black users — but you wouldn’t know it from the arrest statistics. In recent history, Black people have been four times as likely to be arrested on marijuana charges:

 Credit: ACLU

 

4. Death penalty for Black prisoners. In Texas, the state that accounts for the most executions in the nation, 40 percent of death row inmates are Black. That reflects a national trend; across several states that have the death penalty, Black inmates make up a hugely disproportionate number of those sentenced to death, despite Black people’s relatively small percentage of the population. But perhaps the chart that best makes the point is this, from deathpenaltyinfo.org, that shows the racial breakdown of who gets the death sentence for interracial crimes:

 Credit: deathpenaltyinfo.org