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Racial
Hatred and Profiling
The U.S. legacy of racial hatred and infrastructures of racial profiling is mirrored in the penal system. Take, for example, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation (ODRC), where there is scarce rehabilitation. Punitive punishment, racial profiling and warehousing are the norm at the ODRC.
The court in its prisons is called the R.I.B. (Rule Infraction Board), indictments are tickets (conduct reports for a violation of rule infractions) and jail becomes the hole/segregation. Yet, despite of the clinical neutrality of these terms, the systematic racial profiling of blacks can still be seen in the fact that the overwhelming majority of prisoners indicted, convicted, and subsequently thrown into the hole/segregation are Blacks. This is no coincidence. It’s due to white bigotry on both sides of the cell doors.
There’s a double-edged sword in prison. One side cuts the gullible prisoners to experience institutionalization and recidivism, propelling the penal system to treat Blacks as expendable. The other side severely cuts (penalizes) prisoners and PPOW (political prisoners of war) who have become conscious enough to re-educate and organize themselves. Because of this ongoing battle with the powers that be, this consciousness must prevail from confinement throughout the release – especially with Black prisoners.
Black prisoners must remember, learn from and be vigilant of more than 100 years of lynching, the bombing of the MOVE family in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985, James Byrd’s lynching in Jasper, Texas and today’s pattern of systematic black-on-black crimes. They must remember gentrification and the government organization of hurricane Katrina to whiten New Orleans.
In the trenches,
Masi
O. Paki, #210-081 ---
Masi O. Paki is a PPOW who has been in lockdown since the April 1993 Lucasville Rebellion. He is a son, father, uncle and grandfather who has maintained strong family ties throughout his incarceration. Despite the oppression Mr. Paki has experienced since the Rebellion he remains a conscious and re-educated new Afrikan who is determined to obtain his many positive goals.
Masi O. Paki would like to hear from you. You may contact him directly by writing to the address listed above. The following link offers tips for writing to prisoners: http://prisonersolidarity.org/TipsForWritingPrisoners.htm |
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