His privileged friends (white and black) are unwilling or unable to sympathise with his struggle as a disadvantaged black man in modern society or realise the depth of systemic racism in institutions like law enforcement. Throughout Dear Martin, Justyce is exposed to racial discrimination. Through a series of letters Justyce commits to his diary (“Dear Martin…”), he begins his journey to achieve unity of understanding and purpose among the African American community, sadly divided by economic privilege and disadvantage. Martin Luther King, Jr., including the letters between him and other members of the Civil Rights Movement, and realises he has become something of a martyr in the battle against systemic racism and injustice. In his desire to make sense of what he has experienced, Justyce discovers the writings of Dr. Sadly, he finds little sympathy or understanding, even in his black friend, Manny, whose monetary privilege blinds him from seeing what life is really like as a poor, young black man. Justyce becomes deeply emotionally affected and distrustful of law enforcement. A white police officer, who has been racially profiling Justyce even before he finds Melo, misinterprets the young man’s intentions and unjustly arrests him. When he hears one night that his sometime girlfriend, Melo, has gotten too drunk to drive herself home from a party in a wealthy neighbourhood, he ventures out to help her. Even though he understands that racial injustice dominates his family’s narrative, he harbours realistic hopes of attending Yale University after graduation. Dear Martin by Nic Stone tells the story of Justyce McAllister, a strong minded seventeen-year-old black man who lives a challenging life, both in his poor neighbourhood, constantly threatened by local criminals, and at the overwhelmingly white prep school he attends.

Justyce dear martin