Looking out: Sisters and brothers
By Brandon Astor Jones
The warden said to me the other day,
"Why come the black boys don't run off
like the white ones do?"
I lowered my jaw and scratch my head
and said (innocently I think) "Well, suh,
I ain't for sure, but I reckon it's cause
we ain't got nowhere to run to." — Etheridge Knight
The poem above, "On the Yard", is a part of Knight's 1968 work Poems from Prison. Whether freedom from prison comes via escape or parole, the poem's message is true: If you are a black man in prison in the United States you "ain't got nowhere to run to".
One out of four black men are negatively involved in the so-called "criminal justice system". It does not require a sophisticated imagination to characterise prison as a disease for black men. In fact, prison has become a very real epidemic in the African-American community.
If one-fourth of a people's male population is stricken with a debilitating disease, whether physiological or sociological, that is an epidemic. Unfortunately, those people in the African-American community with sufficient power to end the epidemic — by and large — are doing the least to stop it. Some of them are even encouraging its wildfire spread, as if they do not understand that their approval is blocking their own socioeconomic growth as well.
I wonder what the US government would do if one-fourth of its white male population was similarly stricken? It is not hard for me to imagine an immediate state of national emergency being declared. Educational rehabilitation programs, both academic and vocational, would abound for prisoners. Halfway houses would pepper the landscape in a concerted effort to stop the epidemic and rightly so because no one is beyond redemption. No-one.
In all fairness, though, it should be noted that a small group of black leaders, in various areas, via churches and civic organisations, are trying to interact with men of colour in prison, especially those about to be released.
However, in order to have a positive long-term effect on this epidemic, the black community must interact with black men in prison before their release — not to mention before they go to prison. That is not being done in large enough numbers yet.
This epidemic must be attacked with greater force. More people are needed who want to do battle with the disease for the sake of the USA in general and African-Americans in particular. More blacks needed to be involved in that.
As a people we have a long history of forgiving others. I have composed the poem that follows to remind you — and when I say you, I know that you know who you are — that we all seek and deserve your forgiveness as much as any one else.
WHY NOT THEN, YOUR OWN SISTERS AND BROTHERS?
Remember those who saved your child at the Summer Camp School?
No, we did not have money — in fact, we had to sneak into the pool
But then if we had money we probably would not have been there
So climbing over the fence to help, was just a way to show we care
We are some of those also, who threw mountains of picket-line-bricks
While the man's thugs in uniform performed all sorts of dirty tricks
Then we started going to his prisons while you went off to college to get fat
Now, in your wanna be dreams you think being like him is where it is at
So you have learned to parrot, "...get tough and build more prisons!"
As if the poor and people of colour are society's only ills and growing schisms
Of course, you are too busy to write a letter — let alone come to visit
Hypocritically, you complain of government tax, but you really love to spend it
You even let them use your black skin to hide their truly racist while heart
Yes, for our crimes past we should be punished for — given a new start
And allowed to take part in the reconstruction of our broken neighbourhoods
Because, like them, if given a chance most of us are repairable goods
However, too many of you are stuck on a political minority, e.g. Willie Horton
Rarely do you speak of the majority who get out and do right, much more often
On a daily basis you forgive a multitude of so-called-criminal "Others"
WHY NOT THEN, YOUR OWN SISTERS AND BROTHERS?
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]