when deemed less than human

I am not surprised. This is symbolic of a court system and a set of values that do not consider a 17 year old boy being equal to a human. He is deemed to be less than human.
Part of my shaping of not surprised might be my patina of masculinity, to shield my fragile and sensitive being from the dehumanizing brutality of how humans treat one another.
Grieve. Feel your rage, disgust and disillusionment. And rise tomorrow to live for another day. Dedicate yourself to work towards a life of significance, to make a living, giving life, stoking hope and inspiration, appreciating the beauty and love in the Black people, Brown people, Red people and even the white people too, who surround us.

Turn off the television. MSNBC, CNN, the local news and Fox are all channels who’s coverage is to disgust, despair and disempower you. Each hour that you are mired on a channel — from ABC to HBO to Spike — is another instant that you won’t have back or get back. Instead, dedicate your life to activities that advance social justice and humanity, dignity and democracy. This means more time with real people, less time in television. And time with yourself. If you are so despondent or rudderless about what this means at this moment in history, remember that adage of Frederick Douglass that “power never concedes anything without a demand. It never has, and never will.”
50 years after the March on Washington and the delusion, smoke and mirrors that we were all equal (and propelled some to purport to being in a post-racial era), let this remind us — show us, instill in us — that many institutions and people do not see us as human. I do not know if they care to quantify us as more than 3/5ths of a human or less than three-fifths, but in our impaired nation, we are deemed less than human.

Let us not isolate ourselves from the other people of color who are other test subjects in a maniacal experiment of racial domination. For the last 12 years, Muslims, South Asians and Sikhs and others have been caught under the heel of Uncle Sam’s strange and trembling empire while Latinos/as, immigrants and people of color have become the next wave of men, women and children to fill the jails, prisons, detention centers, private prisons, parole offices, cells of solitary confinement, tent camps and extraordinary rendition as the Global War on Terror has come home to roost.
And, let us remember that most of the white people in this country, and the vast majority of people in the world, long for justice and democracy and to live in a country that adheres to tenets of justice, liberty, equality and dignity.