Dear Martin: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

The next morning, Doc comes to Justyce’s dorm room. Justyce tells him to enter, but then he realizes that he’s lying on the floor with his pants around his ankles. He fell asleep like this the night before, after coming home from the party and writing a diary entry. Now he’s dreadfully hungover, and Doc is suddenly before him, giving him a Gatorade and telling him to sit in the desk chair, though Justyce rushes to the bathroom and throws up before reentering the room and asking why, exactly, Doc is there. Doc explains that Manny called him and asked him to check on Justyce. “He’s really worried about you,” Doc says. Although Justyce thinks he’s in trouble and that Manny tattled on him, Doc dispels this idea, making it clear that he’s not going to punish Justyce for drinking.

Letting his guard down, Justyce admits that he “messed up” the night before. When Doc asks what happened, Justyce says, “Manny really didn’t tell you anything?” To prove this, Doc takes out his phone and plays the message Manny left him, in which he merely says that Justyce is “going through some things” and isn’t answering his phone. “If you could just pop by there and make sure he’s all right, I’d really appreciate it,” Manny says on the voicemail. Launching into the story, Justyce explains that he has been on “high alert” ever since his encounter with Officer Castillo. “Noticing stuff I would’ve glossed over or tried to ignore before,” he says. He then tells Doc about his “Dear Martin” project, saying that he’s been trying to live like Dr. King.

Justyce tells Doc that his “Dear Martin” project was going all right until last night. He tells him that his father—who died when he was eleven—had PTSD from being in the military. He was an alcoholic, Justyce explains, and used to get drunk, fly into “rages,” and hit Justyce’s mother. One time, Justyce says, he “caught a glimpse of his eyes,” and he saw that there was “nothing in them,” as if his entire body was on “autopilot.” “I think something like that happened last night,” Justyce says. He adds that he doesn’t want to be like his father, who died in a “fiery car crash with a blood-alcohol level of point two five.” Still, though, he can’t help but get angry when he thinks about Manny letting Jared and Blake say such racist things.

Doc tells Justyce that he “grew up like Manny.” Until he was a sophomore in high school, he was the only person of color in school. In tenth grade, though, he transferred to a school in the city. “You remember how it felt to realize you only have so much control over how people see you?” Doc asks, and Justyce says he’d never be able to forget this. “That’s what it was like for me at the new school,” Doc says. “Everybody saw me as black, even with the light skin and green eyes. The black kids expected me to know all the cultural references and slang, and the white kids expected me to ‘act’ black. It was a rude awakening for me. When you spend your whole life being ‘accepted’ by white people, it’s easy to ignore history and hard to face stuff that’s still problematic, you feel me?”

Doc tells Justyce that he will only “thrive” if he’s at peace with himself. “People are gonna disrespect you, but so what?” he says. He insists that people like Jared have no “bearing” on whether or not Justyce will be successful. At the same time, though, Justyce points out that it’s demoralizing to “work hard and earn your way” just to have “people suggest” that you’re “not worthy.” Still, though, Doc sticks to his point, telling Justyce that his doctoral advisor was extremely critical of his work because he used to wear cornrows. “Told me to my face I’d never succeed,” Doc says. “Jus, if I’d listened to him, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.” With this, he gets up and leaves Justyce alone, telling him to get some sleep.