What if black people were as loved as black culture?

You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.

Malcolm X

I actually had an idea to write this before the murder of George Floyd, but of course something like this has happened again.

I am just going to say right off the bat, this article will not get close to covering everything it should. I am writing mostly off the cuff.

If you are wondering why race relations seem “so much worse now than ever before” it is because this stuff has always been happening, we just have not been exposed to it at the same level. Black people have been targeted and systemically oppressed in America for centuries, and it is only being frequently exposed now in the advent of the information age.

Enslavement. Jim Crow. Black codes. Segregation. The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. For Profit Prisons. Archaic Drug Laws (that do not work.) Iran Contra. Displacing black residents. Voter restrictions. Emmett Till. White Supremacy.

It is appalling to look at all the oppression that black people have faced and still do in “The Land of the Free.” We are brought up with the notion that with hard work, you can succeed in America. If you have a dream, and put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.

Black people and Prisons

This has been a topic of interest for me ever since I started listening to Killer Mike as a freshman in high school. I did presentations on the evils of for profit prisons when I was seventeen.

In America, profits are put above people. Instead of attempting to reform prisoners and helping them set their life on a good track, why not get dirt cheap labor from inmates? Why not pay them a $1.25 an hour? Instead of focusing on reformation, why don’t treat inmates in a way they re-offend to keep them poor?

For profit prisons create goods on the cheap, and are privately owned institution. When the beds are empty in a for-profit prison, the prison is losing money. With minimum mandatory sentencing, some nonviolent criminals get 15 years in prison. For profit prisons and correction officer unions shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure legislation is not introduced that could ban them. Judges have been found to be accepting bribes to impose longer sentencing on people who are going to for-profit prisons.

Black people make up one third of the prison population, while only being 11 percent of the population in America. Are black people just predisposed to crime? Hardly. “African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost 6 times that of whites.” Like what the absolute hell is this? This is why America highest the highest amount of people incarcerated on the planet. Black people are picked out and lined up for slaughter. And what happens to the communities where fathers and mothers are absent for years at a time? Their children do not get proper development. The children don’t get the love they deserve. For every ACE (adverse child event) a developing child has, their chances for an early death and substance abuse skyrocket. Children who lack a loving connection with their parents do not have a fully developed frontal lobe. The area that controls impulses and does abstract thinking. You know which group of people have brains that do not think abstractly? Criminals. Harsher sentencing DOES NOT WORK because when someone is committing a crime, they do not think “gee, if I get caught, I could go to prison for 20 years!”. They are focused in the here in and now.

I read a book about addiction recently by Gabor Maté. This quote puts things in perspective.

“The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes. The majority of my skid row patients suffered severe neglect and maltreatment early in life. Almost all the addicted women inhabiting the Downtown Eastside were sexually assaulted in childhood, as were many of the men.”

Societies most neglected get continually beaten down by the oppression inflicted on them by community members and the upper echelons of society. The poor are more stressed, angry, and less educated. All these things hinder their development. They get shunted to prison, and are not given the thins they need. Their lives are stolen from them. Many never have a chance. When people get released from prison, it is extremely hard to get employed. So in order to provide, what do they do? Return to their life of crime. Many in poor communities do not have resources to have a good paying job to provide, so they turn to crime.

Yeah, I get it. I’m a bleeding heart. There are awful rapists, murderers, and abusers who deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. However, the majority of people in prison are in on drug offences that were only implemented during the heinous drug war started by Nixon. Our prisons are being overcrowded, and the absence of people in their communities only breeds more pain.

America and Black Culture

How much of the mainstream music we listen to and fashion we wear is inspired by black culture? Jazz. Hip hop. Rock n Roll. Gospel. House. Soul. People wear flat brims, bow ties, and Jordan sneakers. Little Richard and Chuck Berry popularized Rock n Roll. Jazz was born from the sorrow of black people. How much food do we eat that was created by black people?

We as a society have an infatuation with all things black culture, but do not treat black people with the integrity they deserve. When a subculture emerges, it is first feared by the dominant culture. Punk, goth, hippies, rappers, etc. They are then morphed and taken into the mainstream. How many hiphop songs top the billboard charts that are preformed by white artists?

Why are black people called lazy when this country was built on the backs of them? Because many cannot escape poverty, even though there is a system in place for keeping them poor? Yes, there are poor people of all races. How some Americans die because they cannot afford treatment is a crime. Black people are the race most likely to live in poverty But, Ronald Reagan can tell an erroneous story of a welfare queen and people will buy it because it fits their agenda.

We love the fruit that bore from the suffering black people still continue to face, then cast them off as stupid and lazy when they stay poor. Why can’t we show compassion instead of making excuses for other peoples’ behavior?

Why are so many unarmed black people killed, and have their names dragged through the muck to justify their murder? Why is no one acknowledging what leads up to people becoming criminals?

If black people were loved as much as their culture, they would not be getting murdered in the streets. Our prisons would not be overcrowded. Much less people would be in poverty. We would not be arguing over the past of someone slain. Less people would be addicted to substances. Less people would be homeless. Less people would be dead.