Less Than 100 Years from a Desegregated America

by Andrew Suspense

Do I believe it is possible to overcome hundreds of years of slave trade mentality in America in our lifetime?

Obviously, NO!!! Whilst being objective! The Slave Trade mentality took a few cruel ideas that turned in 100’s of years and generations to first build, then to maintain such harsh judgements, treatment, and to reclassify a people because of the color of their skin – that is not unprecedented. But the systematic way that it grew and kept strong is unprecedented, largely because it still exists today! However, most laws as they are written to date are on the one hand antiqued… they were written to White America because when the laws were put on the books, America was still segregated and basic color segregation kept crimes and criminals to pockets of areas which also largely speaking crimes weren’t committed as freely and as prevalent as they are now! The systematic, and subliminal indoctrination of racism that maintained for hundreds of years, won’t be eradicated in a few decades when racism has now evolved and isn’t expressed as openly and as commonly as it once was. We aren’t even 100 years removed from a desegregated America!!!

As far as crimes being addressed — The most severely and most commonly committed crime in Virginia is robbery! Which is the one crime that has the highest conviction rate of any crime. It’s also committed mostly by minorities, and it is sentenced more harshly than any other!!! Here is a hard fact and I DON’T make mention of it as a way to demean or to mean that one crime is better or worse than the other, but the fact that it holds true is worth speaking on! If a guy raped a woman at knife or gun point, he will get less time than if he took a purse or wallet from the same woman at knife or gunpoint. So her being victimized on the severity scale her purse holds more value than her body/womanhood!!!
And the repeat offenders who victimize women are said that they are sick and need help!!! But the guy who took her money or watch is a hardened criminal who needs to be taken out of society for decades, with no help or rehabilitation. No educational opportunities to have a chance at a job or having skill sets to help ensure ones chances at being a productive citizen! And there could be 100 robberies and all 100 of them are committed 100% different, but no matter the crime Virginia doesn’t allow judges to sentence each according to each set of facts! Not to mention the representation that all too often falls below an adequate level!

“The prison system can be used/utilized by creating things like,” Convicted Leadership Academy’s!!! ” Prison is devoid of so many USEFUL things, whist spilling over in abundance with ignorance and stagnation!
But when we convicted felons step up and grab some of our at risk youth, then we, in that failure to act ,are responsible for forfeited futures! Our painful experiences need to be fuel or boost we need to get up and over our self created walls of doubt, and be the courage to step into a better me. WE have to talk to, we have to guide, we have to beg our youths, we have to yell at and out to OUR youths. Prisoners can talk to those who are seemingly headed to. We are the instruments and vehicles for rehabilitation for OUR youths!

It would be something like the girls and boys club but strictly with convicted felons mainly those currently serving.
Mass incarceration isn’t necessarily racially motivated, simply because America was still segregated which would have had tremendous impacts on volumes of crimes and geographically, so the penal statutes weren’t cratered to minorities even though it seems as if it was and is!? Oddly enough. But enough about what isn’t, or what we don’t have. Let’s just be the change and get it done, by getting it or any other idea going!

Andrew Suspense
Lawrenceville Correctional Center

What’s a Pound of Human Worth?

By Christopher Smith Read

The institution of slavery is still alive and well in these United States. For authority, I cite the U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIII: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Readers doubting the actual effect this has on the twenty-first century, consider this: the author, as a person “duly convicted” of a crime, is required to work for the Virginia Department of Corrections, as a condition of his good time earning allowance, and is paid 45 cents per hour. Minimum wage laws do not apply to slaves. If he doesn’t work, then the department, through its own legislatively delegated authority, can make him serve his entire 10 year sentence.

This is the reality for millions of men and women throughout this putatively liberty-loving country; a country which, with proper historical, economic, and political context, has zero choice to be what it is: the world leader for keeping people in bondage. Granted, many countries subject prisoners to far more barbaric forms of imprisonment, but the U.S. nevertheless stands quite alone when it comes to the sheer scale of its operations. And United States’ prisons are barbaric for a far more insidious reason: U.S. prisons impose a strict regimen of pure, profit-driven apathy.

How we got to this point is no mystery. In fact, we’ve been doing things this way for so long that even before 1776, when we declared ourselves independent, the stage was set for today. As I’ll argue, we have no choice in the matter; structurally, the U.S. was destined to commoditize human flesh. And only through wholesale, aggressive federal legislation – or better yet, Constitutional amendment – will this ever change. But this analysis will end with what the author sees as a naively Panglossian prescription, given the alignment of the current interests in this country. That said, as Red, played by Morgan Freeman, concedes over and over again in “Shawshank Redemption” : “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Over three centuries ago, in 1714, a transplant from Rotterdam settled into London and penned this scandalous poem:
“Millions endeavor to supply
Each others Lust and Vanity…
Thus every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.”

Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), laid down the claim that “private vices are public virtues” in his “Fable of the Bees”, a sentiment not denied by the Father of Capitalism, Adam Smith (1723-1780), but put forth in his “Wealth of Nations”, with far more sensitivity to the era’s puritanical sensibilities than Mandeville could muster. Even still, both men had identified the beating heart of today’s free market, capitalist economies: people responding to incentives, exploiting opportunities with no regard for society’s well-being, and yet through their consumption, benefitting us all nonetheless.

And there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that capitalism generates wealth. Nor is there any real argument to be had that capitalism’s nearest competitors can even contend. They can’t. But, as with all things, there is a tradeoff; or, as economist’s call it, an opportunity cost. For to make a few immensely wealthy, and most historically far more comfortable than their ancestors, millions will find themselves locked in cages for profit. In a cruel twist, then, many victims of their of own vice, no doubt, will be locked away for public benefit – bees who can never come back to the hive.

Economies are circular networks; one person’s spending is another person’s income. Thus pretty much every tax dollar spent on incarceration ends up back into the hands of private enterprise. The concrete and fence contractors providing the means of bondage, the massive food distributors responsible for providing prisoners with the sustenance – just barely; even the army of correctional officers’ paychecks – all of this eventually worms its way back into private hands, private hands which constitute an asset holding class of people, U.S. citizen or not.

The asset holding class – or Marx’s capitalists – generally do not vote against their own interest. And they generally have an outsize influence on politics, being the people most likely to donate to politicians who will vouchsafe their wealth on the floors of this country’s legislative bodies.

And running prisons says nothing of the mega corporations existing in a symbiotic relationship with the state. Keefe Commissary Group, GTL, Bob Barker Corp., Armor Correctional Health, these are just a few named familiar to nearly every modern prisoner. Mega corporations such as these shamelessly gouge prisoners and their families, all with the blessing of the state in which they operate.

Yet, who can really blame the institutions and firms involved? Where’s the incentive not to seek profit from what lawbreakers have done to wrong society? If the state is to tax its citizens for arresting, prosecuting, and punishing those who harm society, then what’s wrong with getting tax payers the most utility for their dollar? In theory, if private enterprise, contracted to do what the state’s duty is, insofar as incarceration is concerned, can offset – or net out – the cost of its prisons, then society benefits; teleologically, this all sounds good and well. And the father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), had exactly this in mind with his Panopticon, which, interestingly enough, Parliament shot down because they feared the corruptive effects private enterprises would have on the lives of the Kingdom’s prisoners. One today cannot avoid the feeling that this presumption was particularly prescient.

Britain’s Parliament was right to be suspicious. The problem with this utilitarian line of thinking is its paradoxically antithetical quality in light of the very idea – the central focus – of this country’s founding: liberty. How ironic the country oppressing us saw this yet we didn’t. And still don’t.

To see the root issue here we again turn to the Constitution. Fully four of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are intended to protect those accused and convicted of crimes. As much as liberty is explicitly revered in our founding document, the implicit reverence is no less apparent. Which is why, structurally, our free-market economy, with its incentives to commoditize people, is inherently at odds with what we hold most dear: freedom. Simply put, where there exists any incentive at all of the monetary sort to put people in bondage, then the interests of liberty and capitalism clash.

Capitalism, however, cannot be cast off. It works too well. It creates too high a standard of living for far too many to replace with something untested. Though that does not imply market should run unfettered; that’s exactly why people are overly incarcerated today. Rather, the seemingly impossible task is to remind the people that liberty trumps profit, insofar as punishment is concerned.

Thus the author envisions a realignment of priorities, eschewing, by legislation, the incentives so at odds with liberty. In order to radically change the structure of our economy, to reduce the suffering of over incarceration – and ineffective incarceration – we must ensure the state and its private partners have zero monetary incentive to engage in such conflict-prone, deleterious practices in the first place. Positive policy changes will mean society actually pays for incarceration, and that the only real return is of people who’ve been truly rehabilitated. Thus the incentive must be for society to actually invest in those who run afoul of the law. Manufacturing need only perpetuates the problem.

When society actually pays for incarceration, then society will be incentivized to invest properly in the prophylactics to crime: education, vocational training, substances abuse counseling, and diversionary programs in lieu of incarceration. We do these things now, but they are lacking in efficiency and effectiveness.

This all skews left on the political spectrum, yet it’s far more than a matter of politics. But must we as a society simply box ourselves into the tribalistic corners from where we feel comfortable? Why can’t we dialogue, mutually engage, and share in diagnosing what’s wanting in society, without being beholden to some homogeneous theory of political and economic function?

The reality is that the incentive exists for the state to incarcerate any of us at any time because a whole industry – and wealth – has been erected on top of liberty. Society must have prisons. But society shouldn’t let that need drift into the realm of liberty. Until this incentive is removed, the over-incarceration will continue. We have no choice in the matter.

Christopher Smith Read #1770228
Haynesville Correctional Center
Haynesville, VA

Re-Slaving America (Make America Great Again!?)

It’s a horrible sign that the country of America might actually be going backwards– towards the wrong direction… was this what was meant by the 2016 dog whistle calls to ” Make America Great Again”…?

Five states, here in America, are putting a rather interesting bill on their ballots this midterm election season… Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Oregon, and Vermont are all trying to reintroduce “forced labor” back into the American penal system. This situation makes this month’s Brilliance writing prompt somewhat prophetic…

“Am I incarcerated for profit?” (Brilliance writing prompt for October 2022) detailed the very gruesome history of the many insidious ways the powers of this country have exploited the American justice system and configured it into a racist pitfall (a “black hole”). All of this, in an effort to re-enslave black people, subjugate American minorities, and further the seemingly impenetrable grip racism has on this country…

Maybe the powers are going to decided to use the cover of a poor post-covid economy to bolster the need for slavery in prisons? They’ve already put forth the footwork for the past four years and successfully weaponized a fringe base of poor, white people, armed and even ready to storm the capital — maybe in hopes of taking the country “back” to “make it great again?” It is easy to accept the state of the economy as broken or unfit by those privileged but in poverty. But to those who have aligned such privilege with financial success and are now in want more, pointing them in the directions of the prison system as a means for their salvation is a welcomed fix.

Maybe the minimal headway made on social justice reforms leaves most with an unmerited sense of self satisfaction? So much that they aren’t even the least dissuaded to publicly disregard the mental wellness of Black Americans by resurrecting their most critical of traumas.

I hate that the connotation of capitalism can be justifiably understood to mean: at times we sacrifice long term mental anguish in hopes of short term monetary gains. and in a democracy like ours, this expense tends to always fall on the minority.

Why is forced labor in prisons an issue of race?

Well regardless of what our leaders are touting as true social justice reforms, the dramatic disparities in incarceration rates are still very well alive and thriving. the emphasis on racial justice, these past two years, has barely put a scratch on the issue of unfair treatment between minorities and the penal system. Black Americans still greatly outpace white ones in America’s prison population. And as described in the latest Brilliance prompt, the current state we are foregoing in this country concerning Black Americans and prison was deliberate in its design.

Given the recent events taking place within the Alabama prison system– where the incarcerated there are demonstrating a work stoppage in protest of inhumane living conditions and unfair treatment by the Alabama justice system, the fact that Alabama is amongst the states considering forced labor is nothing other than a symbol of its stern unwillingness to consider to the pleas of its prisoners. A bold statement that power is in no need of a heart nor soul. It only needs lives to stand over…

My hopes are that these aversive proposals to enslave prisoners do not go further than just racist propaganda, designed to motivate alt-right fringe voters to the polls.

If this horrible, racist. vision does manage to make it to fruition, my hope then is that the human soul that will forever fight for equality and justice, beats loudly throughout all the hearts of the oppressed and imprisoned, and that of all of their allies, and stands in opposition of such travesty…

Continue to fight for righteousness, because it is not freely given. We are all the children of freedom and it is our birthright to be free…

Love, peace, and power,

Q. Patterson

Am I Imprisoned for Profit?

Editor’s Note: Quadaire has been on a long lockdown for the past few weeks, and spent some time researching the deep roots of mass incarceration. He wanted to share the facts he learned and engage the incarcerated population in Virginia.

Since its conception, America has benefit from free labor and the industry of slavery. Slavery has long been abolished, but the clause of ‘supporting it in cases of punishment for a crime’ has been continuously exploited by corporations and politicians. This has lead to the modern day social crisis of mass incarceration and the lucrative enterprise of the prion industrial complex.

Post-civil war, disgruntled Southern lawmakers sought to evade the parameters laid out by the Reconstruction Amendments (Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV). They used the exception marked out in the 13th amendment that legalized slavery in case of punishment for a crime as the basis for achieving their goal. Incarcerating former slaves disqualified their newfound citizenship, nullified their voting rights, and returned them to chains and involuntary servitude. These Southern lawmakers legislated numerous laws and policies such as “Race Codes,” “Black Codes” and many more targeting former slaves for incarceration. White Southerners effectively weaponized the law to enlist America’s Criminal Justice System as a device to perpetuate slavery under other names.

One of these reimagined forms of slavery mirrored a pre-civil war program used in Louisiana, known as “convict leasing.” Incarcerated prisoners were leased to private companies and plantations as laborers. Ironically, these programs were often many more times dangerous than slavery conditions prior. Private companies held no direct investments when it came to their leased laborers. Unlike former slave owners who stood to lose money if the slaves were to get horribly sick or die, private companies with leased convicts were less dissuaded to put them in very unsafe and hostile environments. Convicts were more harshly abused, and in many cases, company task masters would drive them to their deaths. Since the convict leasing program was facilitated through contracts between the prison and the employer, when a laborer died, the prison would simply replace them to meet their contractural obligations and business resumed as usual.

Convict leasing took numerous lives before it was outlawed. Eventually, the program was replaced by ‘correctional enterprises’ — state-owned companies that used prisoner’s forced labor. Correctional enterprises used prisoner labor to manufacture a number of products ranging from eye glasses, shoes, and state license plates. Correctional enterprises are still widely used today. While they gross multi-million dollars a year, their workers, incarcerated peoples, average to earn about $1 per day to take care of themselves and in many cases, their families.

The prison industrial complex has thus evolved. Today, the highest grossing business fueled by the incarceration of Americans is that of the private prison sector. Private prison corporations gross multi-billion dollars a year. The business arrangement set between these corporations who provide incarceration services to the governmental agencies that employ them is a simple one: Incarcerated service providers supply bed space to state and federal agencies and must meet a quote of occupants in order to satisfy their contracted obligations. The most sinister part of this dynamic is the corporations that provide private prisons are publicly traded on the stock market. Thus, anyone and everyone, even law enforcement officers can profit from an increase in the incarceration rate.

One more interesting concept to identify in the scheme of prison for profit is a little more subtle than others. In 1994, 10 years after the first installation of a private prison, the Clinton Administration enacted the Crime Act. This piece of legislation awarded incentives to the states who get more severe on crime. The Crime Act inadvertently encouraged systemic racism with monetary gain and further the profit-for-prison dynamic.

In a perfect world, we can see the logic in society profiting from anti-social acts such as crime. But in America, our racist past infects our criminal justice system to its core. Post-Civil War and Jim Crow politicians have taken advantage of that notion from the onset of the Emancipation Proclamation. Segregationist politicians worked hard to frame the tactics of the civil rights movement as ‘crime running rapid in the streets’ and spawned “tough-on-crime” politics that still serve as the breeding ground for dog whistle politics today. (as defined in Rethinking Incarceration, as racial legislation ensconced within coded rhetoric about the common good)

Never forget that the American justice system is built on principles of the slave trade, monetary gain at the cost of human lives. Everything from the low cost, low quality food being served in prison mess halls, the highly marked up nearly expired food products being pushed through commissary, excessive price tags on essentially free services such as emails, all combined with state-sponsored monetary incentives for persecuting felony charges, keeping an ample incarceration rate, and cutting corners on a bare essentials are all aimed at profiting of human lives…

All of this takes place under the guise of sound economical principles, public safety, and justice for victims, but just as slavery was regarded as a noble conquest in the eyes of many Americans, profiting from the misfortune of already poor, disparaged people is nothing more than vile, life-costing capitalism.

Quadaire Patterson

Thought Starter Questions for the Incarcerated:

Write your own essay, poem, or submit art relative to this topic. Do not forget to include your name and any contact information for any readers who may be able to offer you some assistance.

Do you believe it is possible to overcome hundreds of years of slave trade mentality in America and your lifetime?
Crime must be addressed in order to have a functional and productive society. How can society better use the prison system to work for those incarcerated and the general public?
How can the prison system be used to serve communities?
Do you believe that mass incarceration is racially motivated due to the past? Why or why not?
Do you believe America can survive without the use of slavery in one form or another?

Reparations for Mental Slavery

I am of the belief that people of the olive hue were enslaved because they had no sense of identity and worshipped under a vine and fig tree that wasn’t prepared for their earthly salvation, but for their subjugators. Throughout history, religion was used as a tool to enslave people of the olive hue and we were forced to submit to man’s will instead of God’s. Nationality is the order of the day, and Marcus Garvey stated that a people without a nationality is like a tree without roots – they just can’t grow.

The denationalization came when we were stripped of our nationality and creed, which is our belief and given inferior names. Within a name is nomenclature, nationality, and societal status. Per United States Constitution, we as persons – which are people without a nationality – have no standing, and are therefore second-class citizens not granted the rights and privileges of first- class citizens. Reparations will come when we seek first the kingdom of God and everything will be granted to you. King Dome, King of the dome. A king is a ruler, a ruler governs. We have to be able to control what we put in our heads and what we put out. Those who can’t govern themselves consents to be governed. Silence is a tacit agreement and until we proclaim our nationality we are consenting to be whatever they say we are and we will continue to be enslaved.

In order to attain reparations, we must first repair ourselves mentally because we have been broken through enslavement and miseducation. Reparations are coming after hundreds of years of enslavement, because now the mistreatment and discrimination of people of the olive hue have gained national recognition and the people in power are trying to clean up behind themselves because physical servitude was abolished per U.S Constitution, but mental slavery wasn’t. The thing about mental slavery was they felt that as long as we stayed dumb and misinformed, we would not realize that we were still being enslaved. The difference now is that people of the olive hue have now awaken and everyone has been awakened at once. It is now on us not to fall back asleep until we receive our reparations and are treated equally.

My name is Antoinne Pitt #1157338 I’m at Lawrenceville Correctional Center. I come in love and leave in peace.

America’s Contradictory Support for Reparations

by Lord Serious

Did you know that the United States has openly supported and even provided reparations to numerous groups who have suffered racial or ethnic oppression at the hands of a White majority? America has supported the Jewish Holocaust survivors fight for reparations from the Germans after World War II. America has provided Native Americans with reparations for its past transgressions, and it has also given reparations to Japanese victims who were confined to American concentration camps during World War II. Contrary to popular belief, reparations are not a free hand out. Reparations are usually given to a racial or ethnic group only after it has suffered an injury so severe that the party which caused the injury cannot reverse the harm, therefore, monetary compensation is given to the descendants and survivors for the purpose of making amends for the injustice that was inflicted. Most recently, President Joe Biden has approved a $460,000 payment to be given to both the parents and the Hispanic children who were separated from their parents and held in cages at the border during the Trump presidency.

Now, the uncomfortable truth is that each of these groups were entitled to receive reparations. But there is no group who has endured more inhumane treatment from the American government than Blacks living in America. No other group is more deserving of receiving reparations from the American government than the descendants of America’s former Black slaves. Yet, as I will show and prove it is our group (native Blacks living in America) who have been historically denied monetary compensation for the damage inflicted upon us by the White majority. America cannot deny its role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and until native Blacks receive fair compensation in the form of monetary restitution, we should never allow America to forget the injustice our group has suffered.

Why has no other group been subjected to the level of hostility and opposition whenever the topic of whether America should pay reparations is being discussed? In fact, when the topic of whether this nation should’ve supported the Jewish claim to extract reparations out of Germany for its role in the Jewish Holocaust, there was very little opposition to this cause. Most Americans overwhelmingly supported this and regarded it as their moral obligation as Anglo Saxon Christians. And the German government was forced to pay $55 billion to approximately 50,000 Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps. That amounts to $1 million per survivor!

Likewise, in 1991, the United States government passed the Japanese Recovery Act which authorized payments to Japanese Americans who were relocated to American internment camps (concentration camps) during World War II. These Japanese Americans were not stripped of their culture and enslaved for multiple generations. Neither were they subjected to public lynchings, beatings, castrated, raped, or prohibited from learning how to read.

Yet, the American government paid each Japanese claimant $20,000 for the four years they spent in confinement. It only took the American government 42 years to apologize and provide Japanese Americans with reparations for their 4 years of suffering. Now contrast that to the 400 plus years native Blacks living in America have been forced to endure due to the post-traumatic effects of slavery, and not only are Blacks denied an apology or reparations from the federal government – but Blacks are also insulted and told to get over it. They tell us slavery is in the past. But how can we be expected to get over a severe injury such as 400 years of slavery when we are being systematically denied restitution to remedy the injury suffered? Why are all other groups entitled to reparations except for native Blacks in America?

Of all of the groups to receive reparations the native American’s claim may have been one of the most substantial. They had their homeland stolen by an invading force, and after fighting numerous wars against the White settlers, the native American was relocated to Indian territories which eventually were dwindled down to reservations. The native American, similar to America’s Black slave, was subjected to not only social degradation, but they also suffered physical abuse and death at the hands of these White settlers. The difference between the native American’s claim to reparations and the native Black’s claim to reparations, is significant in many ways too. Although our mistreatment at the hands of the American government share many similarities, there are also many stark differences that cannot be ignored. For instance, native Americans have been permitted to live tax-free, they have been provided parcels of land where they may live separately from the White majority, and are allowed to self-govern. Historically, native American children have been provide a tuition-free education from this government, and their children have been encouraged to learn. Furthermore, unlike Black slaves, native Americans were always free to carry firearms, they could marry members of any race, and they were free to come and go as they pleased. And most importantly, the five so-called civilized tribes of native Americans benefitted from the enslavement of Blacks. These five native American tribes not only owned slaves, but they fought on the side of the Confederacy to preserve the institution and inhumame practice of enslaving Blacks. Therefore, not only were native Americans permitted to keep their own culture, they were also permitted to fully assimilate into the White American culture. Which is a privilege Blacks are still being denied to this very day.

Yet, despite all of this assistance from the federal government, native Americans have still received far more in reparations from the United States government than the native Black who has received nothing as it concerns the harm we suffered as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. To add insult to injury, President Biden has managed pay Hispanics over $400,000 for each child and parent directly affected by Trump’s immigration policy which separated Hispanic children from their parents at the border and then locked those children in cages. So after Hispanic children suffered about four years of confinement, their group is now being rewarded with almost half a million dollars for each person affected.

Coincidentally, President Biden can’t get the George Bill passed, he won’t get the Voting Rights Bill passed to protect Blacks from voter suppression, and he refuses to even discuss the topic of providing reparations to the native Black! Yet, he had no problem getting the Anti-Asian hate crime bill passed. President Biden lost no time giving Israel $1 billion for its under the dome missile defense system. And Biden made Hispanic reparations for what occured at the border during Trump’s presidency a top priority. When viewing all of these facts in totality, there can be no doubt that America’s INACTIONS regarding its native Black’s claim to reparations have been contradictory when compared to the relative ACTIONS America has taken to provide reparations to other groups. A precedent has been set and America’s refusal to give its native Black population reparations is only compounding the injury we have suffered from this government’s discriminatory practices towards our group. Think about that. Peace!

Lord Serious is an author, blogger, podcaster, and activist. You can learn more about him by visiting his website www.Lordseriousspeaks.com. To view his other pieces on BrillianceBehindBars, click here.

Slavery

We are slaves in the midst of freedom, waiting patiently and unconcernedly, indifferently, and stupidly, for masters to come and lay claim to us, trusting their generosity, whether or not they will own us and carry us into endless bondage.

Martin Delaney (1812-1885 United States)

My name is Antoinne Pitt I am from Portsmouth, Virginia. This profound statement can be related to today’s time because slavery still exists but is done more intelligently. The Constitution of the United States abolished slavery, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party has been duly convicted.

Prison warehousing is modern day slavery and the convicted are the subjects. A system has been put in place that is designed for people of the lower class to fail. Projects and section 8 housing were built to house individuals with a low income. In these environments, the lower class people become susceptible to the things that go on, because the things that we see and hear are planted in our subconscious mind and stored as sensory data. This is where the term ‘product of my environment’ takes rise. We begin to adapt to these environments and begin to engage in some of the activities in what we call a will to survive. Adapting to this survival-of-the-fittest mentality has lead to the mass incarceration of the olive people.

Prison is a billion dollar industry and is truly legalized slavery. A system was put in place and designed for us to fail, but that does not mean we have to fail. Self government relinquishes the power of those that govern. This legalized slavery can be combated by governing yourself – if not, you are consenting to be governed. This is done by living a righteous life, right thought, right action and adhering to the universal law of cause and effect that governs all events. A person who didn’t teach you right has no intentions of treating you right.

You are only as free as your thoughts. Stop waiting for your master to give you direction, but direct the course of your life by mastering yourself. Peace and love.

– Antoinne Pitt, From Portsmouth / LVCC

Financial Freedom

The words of the multi-platinum selling billionaire rapper and American icon point to a very factual solution to the problems Black Americans face today.

Black American’s ancestors, slaves ripped from their home country, were poor, destitute, and forced into servitude unwillingly, and were unpaid workforce and the backbone of the American economy for centuries. The physical shackles have been long released, but substituted for more subtle forms of bondage. Today, Black Americans as a whole are still experiencing the economical oppression that echoes from times pre/post/antebellum.

In a capitalist society such as America, poverty may be as good (if not worse than) death – at least death to any hope of the American dream. White Americans from back then realized the importance of economical wellness as a means to greater participation in the American dream. Through legislation, intimidation, and physical force (such as the burning down of Black Wall St. in Tulsa, Oklahoma), they were successful in stagnating the development of Black wealth, but not achieving it’s death. Those times have changed for the most part, but not entirely. The presence of systemic racism has recently been widely accepted as fact, barring a majority of Black Americans from obtaining a grip on basic livelihood, let alone equitable wealth.

Surely these are the facts, but another fact remains… to obtain true freedom in our capitalist society, it is not enough to be only physically free… you must also be free financially. That takes cooperation, persistence, and fortitude of an entire people. In addition to those characteristics, a greater perspective must be gained. A perspective encompassing generational wealth- beyond day to day, or even year to year… not only for your children, but your children’s children. Don’t think in decades, garner a perspective that equates to millennia. Rich is for the moment, true wealth is forever – accompanied with the knowledge and wisdom not only to survive, but thrive…

– Q. Patterson, #1392272