Thought that might get your attention. Of course they're not evil but a visitor from space might be forgiven for drawing that conclusion if it landed in a US prison yard.
In the America of George w. Bush, over two million sit behind bars. Of those, about half are from the country's black minority. The nice thing is, all that incarceration doesn't seem to be working.
Got your attention again, eh? What's "nice" about having all those prisons housing all those inmates? To you, probably nothing. Decent people ought to find that appalling. Then there are those who drive America's booming Prison/Industrial Complex (PIC), the commercial side of that country's penitentiary system. They see things differently from you decent folk.
We know the Chinese have a long history of using prisoners as slave labour. The Chinese are embarrassed enough about it to try to hide it. Not so in the US. In selling prison labour the Americans make it seem humane by only taking 80% of the inmate's "wages" to offset the costs of incarceration. The remaining dollar a day goes to the prisoner and that supposedly makes the practise entirely different than slavery - or at least slavery as enshrined in American history.
It's natural to see both sides of this problem but you can't sit the fence on this one, you have to decide whether the state has any right to enrich itself through forced prison labour. Maybe if the money went to social programmes or benefits for the prisoners themselves if, for example, the prison population determined how it would be spent, that would be different. Maybe if the money, the state's share at least, went to more properly compensate victims of violent crime, that would be different. Maybe if it went to help young people in the high-crime neighbourhoods learn skills to stay out of prison that would be different. But that's not where the money is going. Most of it winds up in the treasury of the private companies that now run many of America's prisons.
Ironic, isn't it? We know that unemployment and poverty drive crime. When an economy is booming, crime rates fall. That's perfectly logical. But, let's take jobs that ought to be available to those who need them, and make inmates do those jobs for a fraction of a fair wage. What does that create on the street? Could it be more unemployment and more poverty? Could it be more convicts to feed the Prison/Industrial Complex? Bingo. What it also creates is a pool of infamously cheap labour that allows the PIC's customer companies to drive up their profits.
See, everybody wins. Everybody except the poor. They lose. But don't worry, there's a bunk in a cell waiting for them plus three squares a day.
Here's a little parting twist. We all know that the US has but five per cent of the world's population yet contributes 25 per cent of our planet's greenhouse gas emissions. That same five per cent of the world's population also has imprisoned fully 25 per cent of the world's inmates. Kinda neat, eh? And they're just getting started.
3 comments:
You've obviously never had to live in a black neighborhood. You'll be surprised how having drunk blacks shouting at you on a daily basis takes so much away from your self esteem.
You're always outnumbered so you can never fight back.
Black people need to stop treating people who are "different" so shitty cuz those people in their neighborhoods go to the polls too, and even if it isn't right, having to deal with their ghetto bull**** almost makes you wanna vote republican. I said almost. All I see in gangsta/hip hop culture is a hatred of ME.
I grew up with nothing and have been hated by blacks my whole life and I never did anything wrong to them.
I hate how rich white people get to sit in nice comfy suburbs and tell me over a computer screen how hard "they" have it. They have it a lot easier than I do, at least their own neighborhood loves them. They have 30 cousins and uncles within walking distance, I don't even have a single sibling or cousin who doesn't live in some stupid midwestern suburb, since white people these days have no balls and will abandon their own because their job wants them to move, so we NEVER have power in numbers for that reason and are stuck in a place where poor white people living in the city almost always are targets of the black man's rage whereas the other 95% of white people have NO idea what's going on and have never experience real-life oppression.
Which is why they condone it.
What about poor white people going to prison for stuff rich white people would get away with? Noone gives a DAMN about ME. Fuck America, fuck all you liberals who told them black kids to bully me when I was little, people are so evil. How could you do that to a little kid? Now I hate blacks AND whites, that's all you did to me, you didn't teach me "tolerance" that's what you CALLED it, but my school was 80% black there is NO REASON that 80% of the school needs to be made to feel "special" while the other 20% is singled out as "not special". Growing up in the 90's and watching students get special treatment and get away with hurling abuse at me because of the color of their skin, that made me resent black people for LIFE.
And before you say "I don't care what you think about us hater".
First off, find out what "hate" is.
Second, drop the capitalist "Hustla" mentality and stop abusing poor people. All those "inner city youth" you love to feel sorry for (gang members) do you know who their primary target is? HOMELESS PEOPLE! Half of them black, I would imagine.
So examine your sympathies. The black man is so powerful in our society, that he can rape a black woman, and Al Sharpton will see HIM, not her, as the "victim". Seeing things like that is what makes me resent black culture.
And the idea of a "hater" is designed so that powerful, wealthy black men who RUN black culture can never be criticized. But POOR black people can still get criticized plenty because noone will accuse you of being a 'hater".
I could say we're in this together and we should fight the SYSTEM, but black people don't want unity. They want eternal war, eternal "payback", they want to BE the oppressor so they can oppress not only whites, but other black people.
Stop thinking that "mo money" is the solution to everything. Seeing a black man in a Hummer shouting about how rich he is and waving his money around does not make me "respect" or "hate" him. It just shows me how black culture has no empathy or love and how they ridicule the poor and the needy in favor of the "playas" and "hustlas".
You say you want racism eliminated well you're not going to do that by shutting our your opponents and telling them to "keep on hatin'". Eventually black people have to face up to valid criticism against their hip hop culture.
I mean, for crying out loud, I haven't even seen a single public black figure denounce RAPE yet, something that obviously needs to be done in neighborhoods where "pulling a train" is a daily occurance.
ALL violence is hate, you people think only the poor and oppressed can be "haters" but if some rich hustla punches a random old lady in the face, its okay, because "he be runnin' ****"
The problem isn't liberalism. The problem is conservatism. Black culture is to conservative. They need to learn about feminism, and MOST of all, classism, something black people suffer from HORRIBLY. Stop making fun of other black people who make less than you, for starters. Stop making fun of the white people in your neighborhood, they probably have it worse off than you.
The black man can not get respect, until he stops trying so HARD to get it, you WOULD get respect if you could drive a nice car WITHOUT waving money around like a 12 year old. Being rich might even be a good thing. But BRAGGING about it: Do you see white lawyers or white doctors waving money around begging for attention? No. You know why that is? Because THEY'RE NOT 12.
If black culture was more LIBERAL, they would know that having a nice car and wearing nice clothes doesn't make you better than other people and they would know that women have rights and not every female is a "becky" who wants to be raped.
Also, black men: Sometimes a woman doesn't want to talk to you. GET OVER IT and stop being so damn CREEPY. A white guy will ask once and walk away, but black dudes get MAD when a woman turns them down,
Aspects of your culture like that, need to be looked into.
White people used to be the ultimate savages on Earth but look at us now, white women have the same rights as white men do, we freed the slaves on our OWN accord, maybe the fact that other white people get to live in such a safe society free of male aggression and capitalistic bragging, maybe that's their reward for choosing to free the slaves when they didn't have to.
I really feel for black people who get ridiculed for acting "too white". Usually its because they've heard the screams of a woman "having a train pulled on her", and they've heard just about every black male in existance say that she was a slut who got what she deserved, and he puked and said "holy CRAP...I think I'm gonna go chill w/ some crackas" lol
We used to be like that 200 years ago, we used to rape and kill like noone's business, but now it is 2011 and time to move forward to a liberal, open-minded society where homeless or poor people are supported and not ridiculed or robbed by teams of gangbangers.
Where rape is a man's fault, like it is everywhere OUTSIDE of Iran, and Detroit *rolls eyes*
BTW these "oreos" are the only black people who give me a hint that maybe, maybe black people really ARE equal. That's because they understand abstract concepts and are usually smarter than white people from my experience, an oreo can go up to a group of rednecks, talk with them, and end up giving them that slack-jawed look lol.
Do you not realize that begging people to "hate on you" creates more hate in the world? Don't tell me now you "dont' give a ****" you do, just like I do, you DO give a **** or you wouldn't say anything.
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