“You think that man who killed Trayvon gonna be guilty?”

I’m taken aback by the question because we are talking about getting him signed up for a GED class.

“Where did that come from?” I ask.

“I just be thinkin’ bout him sometimes.”

The young man who asks the question is 18. He’s been arrested several times and has been locked in juvenile detention twice. He’s never been to prison but I can’t guarantee that he won’t end up there eventually. I think about how to answer his question. I find it strangely heartbreaking that he is so familiar with a dead boy. He calls him “Trayvon” as though he knew him. Perhaps he did in a cosmic way. They are around the same age, black, suspect, and unfortunately eminently killable in our society.

It’s no secret what I think about the Trayvon Martin case. I have written about it here, here, and here.

As is my way when I am trying to figure out what to say, I asked him what he thought instead.

“Nah, they not gonna find him guilty. Ain’t never no justice for us,” he said.

I want to ask what “justice” would mean to him. I want to engage him in a philosophical discussion about whether true “justice” is achievable in a fundamentally unjust society. But we only have a few minutes and I need to make sure that he signs up for the GED class.

So I admitted that I too suspected that he would be found not-guilty. And even if he was found “guilty,” would that mean that “justice” had been served? As I spoke the words though, I wanted to call them back for some reason. How strange for that to be the case for someone like me. I have no faith in the U.S. criminal legal system. Zero. And yet… It wasn’t easy for me to express my cynicism about the outcome of the Trayvon case to this 18 year old young black man.

Sadness pressed down heavily on my chest. I could feel it lodged there. I have yet to unpack what emotions the sadness is really masking. Why was I sad? Maybe it was because for all of his studied pessimism and impassivity, I could see that the young man still hoped that ultimately “justice” could be served.

Even though this young man has had a frontline view of the vagaries of the U.S. “justice” system, he still wants to believe that it can be “just.” It says something about the power of the idea of “fairness” for human beings. We all want to believe that the world can be “fair.” I know that I do and that’s the rub of it, isn’t it?

I didn’t want to feed a sense of resignation in the young man. I don’t want to breed an even greater distrust in the system. But I long ago stopped believing in fairytales. Clear-eyed and sober truth seems best for young men of color in this society. The basis of my relationships with young people is honesty. It is the currency for building and maintaining trust. Without it, I have nothing.

We’ve met a few times since this initial conversation and each time, we have spoken about the ways that we can all work to resist oppression and to create a more “just” world. I want him to be hopeful that change is still possible even though we are not where we need to be yet. I am reminded again of a quote that my friend Shira shared with me. It has become one that I hold on to as I navigate my way through the messiness of youth work:

“It is part of our task as revolutionary people, people who want deep-rooted, radical change, to be as whole as it is possible for us to be. This can only be done if we face the reality of what oppression really means in our lives, not as abstract systems subject to analysis, but as an avalanche of traumas leaving a wake of devastation in the lives of real people who nevertheless remain human, unquenchable, complex and full of possibility.” Aurora Levins Morales, Medicine Stories

This quotes reminds me that my job in working with young people is to bring my whole self to the encounters that we share. It is to remain true. It is not to sugar-coat but to also strive not to disempower. On my best days, I think that I get it half right…