A day in the life on Georgia's death row #2
By Brandon Astor Jones
Georgia prison administrators routinely torture prisoners with water. Situated near the exercise yard's door — which is open more often than not — the shower is reduced to little more than a wet freezer. The prison administrators tend to make a game of having the water so cold that you freeze or so hot that you cannot get beneath it.
Recently, I was cold, wet and the only African-American in a shower full of Caucasian Americans. For a short while the only sounds were those of running water falling from the locked room's four shower heads. The non-vocal serenity of the room was broken by a younger prisoner's laugh as he tried repeatedly to goad an older prisoner into taking part in what the younger prisoner called "a dumb Polack" joke.
As I think back on that incident, the old adage about there being safety in numbers springs to mind. The younger prisoner (coward that he is) would not have spoken at all if there had not been so many Caucasian prisoners in the shower with him. In the cell block, he barely speaks above a whisper.
As he kept trying to goad the older prisoner on, it occurred to me that if I had not been present, he might have tried to tell an insulting joke about African-Americans. I shared my thoughts with the other prisoners present when he left the shower.
What I found so interesting about that shower scene was the irony. The younger prisoner does not have a reputation for being a racist, but the older prisoner does. That is why the latter's silence struck me as so unusual: he usually is very vocal when an opportunity arises to speak against people who are in the minority. In that case his silence, in effect, amounted to his speaking up for a minority.
On the other hand, perhaps I should not have been surprised. I, too, have a reputation — as a self-appointed watchdog of prisoner behaviour that can be considered racist or bigoted. I was standing next to him as he was being goaded. At the risk of seeming vain, maybe that is why he chose not to speak. In either case, I am glad that he remained silent.
It is my opinion, and experience, that any man or woman who can tell a so-called "dumb Polack" joke is (at the very least) dangerously insensitive; and if s/he is not a card carrying racist already, s/he is well on the way to becoming one.
Of course, there are those who think that I am all wet from the waters of "political correctness". In fact, rumour here has it that I am "too sensitive". Well, I do not think that I am too sensitive, but I have never liked "dumb Polack" jokes in the same way that I have never liked "dumb blonde" or n-word jokes. It is fair to say that I have a healthy measure of contempt for those who do.
History and logic tell me that if I do not take a stand against the racist abuse of other people, I cannot hope that they will one day do likewise for me. The words that follow, attributed to Martin Niemöller, seem appropriate here:
"In Germany they come first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no-one was left to speak up."
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-63, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]