Feel free to take offense, because I do daily, though I'm borderline numbed to the fact because this is my life. What am I speaking about? Criminality. We have thousands upon thousands of laws, we have hundreds upon hundreds of prisons and we have ONE class group that is largely affected by these two realities. The Lower Class, The Forgotten Urban Side of this Free Nation. So what does this mean? Well starting off, our system is built to protect more property relations than personal relations, meaning that our laws, primarily affecting one class, are so often broken because of the astronomical disproportionate wage disparities in our country. Our poor, commit crimes because our poor are poor. Our government and its economic system does more to keep the poor in need and hopeful than positions of prosperity. Why? Because our capitalist society that our esteemed politicians want to so badly to protect is an oppressive system and institution that rewards the wealthy and able, while punishing those that haven't won the quote unquote "birth lottery". Not only are young black boys criminalized at such a young age, stripping away their youth and innocence- which only results in more harsher sentencing and no benefit of doubt because they are recognized as of mature sound mind and body at much younger ages than other kids making them out to look like more victimizer than victim. Victims of circumstance, environment, society, laws, wages, education, impartial bias' and racism enforced in institutions and prisons. These black kids learn to internalize all the hate that they absorb nonchalantly everyday throughout their lives until they finally break! Not seeing a way out, or a way to win for a change. So now our great justice system swoops in and carries them away into cages, profiting off their misery and misfortunes, instead of instilling within in them a trade and a chance to see themselves as more than the self hate and hopelessness that they have grown to embrace. The crime is that crime profits. The crime is that our system feeds on the weak. The crime is that our legal system targets colored people. The crime is that our penal system depicts the relationship gap and wage disparities, while endorsing segregation and fostering hate of people that look different, all the while festering a continued negative relationship with law enforcement figures which will only go to repeat the same cycle of imprisoning ex cons more often once out because the targets on their back. The crime is that public servants-politicians, are career workers, because these same people that advocate legislation for everyday Americans don't look like me for the most part, nor are they from nor have been where I am from, while not experiencing nowhere near the same side of life that I have. So how can Americans like me be properly represented when our education system propel the middle and upper class, while the urban communities scrap for governmental resources. With day to day life choices as vital as life or death in most scenarios likened to crabs in a bucket, they don't get to live, they cope. No, the crime is that there are people that believe that black people have it easy, that slavery ended in the 1800's, that racism is no longer a thing to be given attention, that today is way better than yesterday so people like me should stop complaining, and white people are just too damn comfortable with their positions and too damn offended by speaking about race and class differences, while enjoying the privilege they're allotted in their silence. What the real crime is, and I quote from the late Martin Luther King Jr "...in the end, what will be remembered, is not the voices of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.." So I can't be satisfied with just shaking my head anymore. I can't be satisfied with C.O.'s telling me that people should leave the country if America is so bad-because of their right to protest and who just happens to speak to the conditions of people like me, whom look like me. Then watching our President say the same thing, his words not held to the same standard and accountability of everyday Americans. Being black feels like a whole other nation inside the U.S., its just different. I've made enough excuses for why people don't speak to power for the powerless, but I can't any longer, when I'm serving everyday and not a day less for my own accountability. Personal interests outweigh our civic duty huh? Sometimes its hard being proud that I'm black?? Not only am I a face of America's ugly past but its resiliently hidden and ugly present, and because its so damn hard! Being numb is welcomed when coping is a lifestyle, now living becomes a talent that people looking like me have mastered all too well. There's an extra angst to life being black. The reality is sadly that color still matters. Living poor black and leaving prison is a Shock! People from these communities at their equilibrium have PTSD and have succumbed to the false imprisonment America has placed on them like some sort of Stockholm syndrome, truly believing that they can rise up and that the problem is more them than this system. Despite the spirited energy oozing from urban communities, the trauma stems from the fact that urban life is a WarZone! A warzone of depression oppression desperation attrition fear pride poverty economics violence political pawns boosting careers of suburban men that no sooner forget their promises the moment they're elected. Hunger and Healthcare can be solved very easily in America, but greed complicates the issue because people feel as if they have lost what they give away freely-so tied to material gain that we lose our sense of humanity. We have the resources, just not the will to stop people from staying starving struggling and suffering at the bottom, just be real about it. America feels greatest when it's lightest-the rich middle and white out front, the dark and lowest out back. Facts!
RUSSELL
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