Sunday, October 30, 2016

TheAfricanInquirer.com: PART II EDUCATION & INCARCERATION

TheAfricanInquirer.com: PART II EDUCATION & INCARCERATION:     Continuing from my last posting on the subject of incarceration and education though the crudeness of "MASS INCARCERATION"  (...

PART II EDUCATION & INCARCERATION

    Continuing from my last posting on the subject of incarceration and education though the crudeness of "MASS INCARCERATION" (2,306 PER 100,000 Black people) compared to (716 per 100,000 general population) Black/Americans have once again become the (free) labor force of Americas though the  "CORRECTIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX". That means that in our community we have become Americas indenture subsidy of corporate welfare which has enable the circulation of federal and state money into friendly local pockets while simultaneously appealing to local racist sentiments. The fine print of the 13th Amendment which officially abolished slavery for all people EXCEPT those convicted of a crime has assign White racist indoctrination on the Black/American and have criminalize the Black/African community and any other undesirables the authorities see fit to subjugate. Now instead of  the ruling class going to the other side of the world for their labor (third worlds), they have created it here and it's call JURISPRUDENCE. That is, the American legal system became about politics after the 1850's which confine itself to rules and regulations enacted and recognized only by the U.S. government (fugitive slave laws). From that point on America stop reflecting timeless principles of justice and morality that existed independent of governmental recognition. In order to understand this more I suggest reading up on Oliver Wendell Holmes on realism law as oppose to natural law.
     You see, what was once called social justice in the legal system became institutional racism and it has ingrain itself into the fabric of the American legal system which became pervasive in the dominate culture based on privilege and White supremacy that perpetuates the marginalization of Black/African people. It always amaze me when I see in a court of law, they ask the Black/American or poor people in general if they understand the charges and they answer YES, because the real answer is NO, not unless you went to their law school for three years and took the bar exam. (just by answering NO would throw their kangaroo system in chaos.) But anyway, the American legal system negatively affects people of color collectively not individually through their history, experiences and sensibilities or lack of them. One psychiatrist by the name of Seymour Halleck once said " if one had systematically and diabolically tried to create mental illness, one could probably have constructed no better system than the American prison system".
     If one don't see the American penal system as the modern plantation, a sophisticated plantation that pays little to nothing for labor done by slaves 150 years ago is just a repackaging of  that involuntary servitude you, are very apathetic to humanity (which the American culture is). Since their second World War when Black/Africans return from overseas and realize that we were not second class citizens on the world stage White privilege has turned Black people into potential criminals. All based on racial and class stereotyping by White propaganda that would eliminate all obligation of justice and democracy and replace it by the equivalence of a police state. Because like the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX the penal system is a capitalist dream because as a economic entity its only rule is to grow and make a profit which it does very successfully. Its failure is in not protecting from real harm the public nor do it rehabilitate the prisoners and the statistics represent that reality in terms of confinement vs education.
     For instance, in the American society for every child from kindergarten to 12th grade at our best we spent about $12,000 per year per student (New York State), but for the so-called criminal the price tag is about $60,000 per year per criminal. So the bottom line is as a investor, a person with money who need to see their money grow short term where would you put your money into? The need to make a profit is imposed on investors as a condition for not losing their investment and their position as capitalist makes all other needs a poor second. What I came to understand is that fair play for all American citizens coincides with the self-interest of White privilege and the Correctional Industrial Complex has a economic and ideological stake in escalating incarceration rates. White racist communities flourish within rural penal setting, which is why there are no prisons in the inner-city, only jails which are temporary.
     Not only is it very profitable to all who participate, except the disenfranchise it reproduce the fundamental white supremacist culture of  Pre-Civil War America. (THIS MUST CHANGE & THE ONLY WAY IT WILL CHANGE IS THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF SELF!!!!  That is what real education is, the recognition of self and knowing what are your possibilities through the accomplishment of others like you. On one of my Facebook pages, what I call my "material culture" page
AJ-PRODUCTS & CO. (@ajproducts.co) you will find my playing cards. Playing cards that represent our ancestors and our history which resembles us as the subject, plus it's a valued psychological expression of our material world.   CHECK IT OUT!!!
   
   
   

Monday, August 15, 2016

Preserving the Right to Vote in 2016 and Beyond

TheAfricanInquirer.com: EDUCATION & INCARCERATION PART I

TheAfricanInquirer.com: EDUCATION & INCARCERATION PART I:      I know many of you know the story of our beloved brother, Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) and how he received his true education as a Africa...

EDUCATION & INCARCERATION PART I

     I know many of you know the story of our beloved brother, Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) and how he received his true education as a African starting with his incarceration thanks to the guidance of Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam. Back then there was a saying that the Black man's knowledge of self came from two directions, we either learn of self through incarceration or like myself in the military ( if they didn't get you killed first). In the navy I was schooled by enlighten brothers from all over the country (especially from the south), with a adamant knowledge of the American racial system. It was in the navy where I learn from a southern brother that I came from the "deep North" which in the reality of it all was only marginally different from the deep south. The point being that knowledge is the subtext of our education (not getting a job), knowledge of self is the factor of Western life (the main reason we are indoctrinated with European history) .
     Recognition of self is the most notable distinction between living and lifelessness, it's the broadest sense in the means of a connection of experiences. The inescapable facts of life and death is determine by what you know through a process known as "TRANSMISSION", which occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feelings that is transmitted from the elders to the young. And without this transmission of history, hopes, expectations, ideals, standards and opinions from the knowledgeable (elders) to the young, knowledge will not and can not survive.
     Acknowledgement of self is not automatic and unless ways are taken to see that positive and thorough transmission takes place, knowledge of self will be lost. That is because human beings are so immature when young that if they were left to themselves without guidance and support from their elders they can't acquire the elementary abilities necessary for their own physical existence. "HUMANISM", the rational and humane stance that highlights the value and genesis of human beings individually, collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking over acceptance of dogma or superstition.
        As Black/Africans we are defined by the messages we get from the circumstances we find ourselves in, like being African in America, the place where widespread devaluation of the African universe is based on race. Where race is the qualitative phenomenon understood as a violent and oppressive sociological, anthropological, political, economic, and educational phenomenon. Knowledge of self must be a destination that braid together our reality much as what a college degree do for White people. As Black/Africans we must understand that the braiding of White reality is a constant in America from birth to death, but with the African in America we must be taught to value ourselves though constant knowledge of our circumstances.
     Like mass incarceration of the Black/African population which is a fundamental fact in America as slavery was a fundamental fact in 1825. "LOCKUPTOWN " in American represent more then 7,000.000 Americans who are either behind bars, on probation or on parole, and due to selective law  enforcement those that are in the criminal system are the so-called minorities. Scholarly literature on the history of crime and punishment has trace American passion for punishment back to the 19th century bestowing blame in two directions. In the North there was the enlightened tradition, the birthplace of "REHABILITATIVE  PENOLOGY" and in the South the prison system was a continuation of the slave plantation, the originator of  "ENSLAVEMENT DISCIPLINE". In the North it was the taste for reducing people to a scientific concept (statistics), and in the South reduce them to brutes. In the American judicial system the stress is on process and procedure rather then principles, that is, justice is really not important, the "golden rule" hasn't any value, but what's routine is everything.
     What is seen of the American Justice system though the eyes of Black people is routine, which they have create with this "pipeline"  starting with the public school machine which is basically a babysitting establishment to equip the the neglected, the weak, and the discourage with the melancholy of their future. This is a procedure that ends with the penalty of prison or death in the streets not only by other disenfranchise rivals but also pseudo-law enforcers with a license to slaughter at will with the excuse "I feared for my life". America lockup the Black/African and forget about their existences and tell us  "don't take this personally", but at the same time the so-called law enforcer officers and system (prosecutors & politicians) are congratulating each other on their combined professional excellence.
     On a personal note, I once had a lawyer say to me "don't ever plea guilty to anything because in America you can almost get out of everything", because the goal of American law is not justice but procedural (routine). Like conventional policing which was only pursued from two approaches which were "THE WATCH SYSTEM" and "THE SLAVE PATROL". The former was a combination of involuntary and voluntary cooperation, like reporting fires, maintaining order in the street, pursuing suspected criminals with loud cries to raise alarm, captured and arrest lawbreakers. Modeled after the English structure, policing was a community based organization developed from "kin" policing from about 900 A.D. when law enforcement power was in the hands of the people and they were responsible for their kin or community. Now on the other hand the latter follow another path whose primary functions was to chase, apprehend, and return slaves to their owns, to provide a form of organized terror to deter a slave revolt, and to maintain a form of discipline for slave workers who were subject to summary justice outside  of the law (lynching) if they  violated plantation rules. And what we as Americans (Black, White and Hispanics) don't understand is that in the White community there is a watch system that White people understand and respect. But in the people of color communities all we see is the slave patrol, like when an law enforcement office stop me once for an error on his part and didn't apologize, only said "you are lucky this time". Which I interpreted as meaning as a Black man I was lucky because the routine is to put me in the system.
     I'll close this posting now and call this PART I because there is more I have to say on this subject, plus I have a goal to help counteract this lack of self knowledge among our incarceration Brothers and Sisters.


Sunday, May 1, 2016

DRUGS (PHARMACEUTICALS) & RACISM IN WESTERN CULTURE

     From the beginning I want to say that as well informed that I sometimes think I am, I'm startled time and again how we the so-called informed continue to fall for the myths of  this society, like "DRUGS".  Because for the past 100 and some years this American culture of our has fabricated the misconception that the illegal use of pharmaceuticals is harmful to the particular individual and the community as a whole. But the facts speak for themselves, like the 2014 report by the Center for Disease Control which stated that of the 47,055 overdose deaths in America, only 10,574 were of illicit drugs. Which mean that authorized drugs is killing us at the rate of 4 to 1 more than illegal drugs. The truth of the matter expressed by the UNITED NATION'S OFFICE OF DRUG CONTROL, the main drug war body in the world, which stated that 90% of all banned drug use doesn't harm the user. Now don't get me wrong in no way am I saying that drugs is a good thing but most so- called legal and illegal drugs will always be a presence in our society. And they do have serious consequences for the individual who uses them (some negative and some positive), and for the society as a whole there will always be the dilemma of 10% to 15% of the population who will becoming addicted to them.
     Another thing about so-called unlawful drugs is that they have a history with RACISM in its inception, the first laws being in 1875 which outlawed the smoking of opium which was a  Chinese habit in San Francisco.White males believe that the Chinese men were luring White women to have sex in opium dens so the law was about smoking opium not drinking or injecting it, which white people did. Then in 1909 Congress made opium smoking a federal offense by enacting the "ANTI-OPIUM ACT" which reinforced Chinese racism by slicing out and exempting drinking and injecting tinctures of opiates. Cocaine on the other hand was associated with Black people. The NEW YORK  TIMES in 1914 publish an article that readed: "negro cocaine fiends are new southern menace: murder & insanity increasing among lower class blacks because they have taken to sniffing". Congress passed the "HARRISON TAX ACT OF 1914" outlawing opium and cocaine.
     By 1920 the racists referred to Marijuana as the Mexican's superdrug when they smoked it, the word was it give them superhuman strength to commit acts of violence. An anti-immigrant group, "The American Coalition" once said that Marijuana was perhaps the most dangerous of narcotics and is a direct byproduct of unrestricted Mexican immigration. So marijuana was associated with race and ethnicity, but before that it was legal and known as "Cannabis" or the hemp plant. This fear along with American prejudice extended to the Mexican traditional means of getting high or relaxing. The story of criminalizing marijuana, the "locoweed" of the Mexican was based on fear, fear of brown people, the marijuana menace led to restrictions in state after state resulting in federal prohibition.
     Even  "American Civil Liberties Union" states that the main reason for more then half of the drug arrests in America results in a deeply disproportionate number of arrest among people of color which is racism. The organization called "The Drug Policy Alliance" out of New York City is committed to exposing the disproportionate arrest rates and the system that perpetuates this form of racism. I remember reading once the story of a Colombian farmer who didn't understand the controversy of him growing the coca plant when in the United States of America they grow the best tobacco in the world which is sold throughout the world.  I thought about when I was in the U.S. Navy and in Naples Italy, there were boys around where American navy men came to port and discarded their cigarette butts. Rumor was they collected the butts for the American tobacco and rerolled them for sale, and we all know what tobacco do to the human body, not to mention alcohol and caffeine the three top selling drugs in our culture and they are all legal, like slavery was.
     So my take on the drug policy in the Americas is it's just another form of systematic racism which endless evidence point to the bias, prejudice and stereotyping on the part of the judicial system's contribution to it.  Because the reality is with the appropriate networks (doctors, health insurance, drug stores) a person can get any so-called illegal drug legally, something White America has been doing for decades. The problem today is that they have now produce these White addicts that are out of control and they don't know what to do with them. They can't turn them into criminals like they did us because it would upset the status quo.
     One of the problems (and there are many) of Western cultures drug difficulties is they have attempted to handle it as a criminal issue and blame it on so-called inferior people of color and ethnicity. The reality is drugs is a human social concern and the people who created the criminalization protocol were not only ignore of the facts, they were and still are racist. The policy created by American media that sensationalize all aspects of human personality variables in order to divide and conquer.