Father Daughter Prison Dance to the Beat of Colonization of Parenting and Hetero-nomative Ideals

Here is a link to the article: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/06/virginia-jail-holds-father-daughter-dance-for-prisoners/

Followed by some of my many thoughts:

In ABC News headlining article published June 23 2013, author Steve Osunsami describes a father daughter dance put on by a Virginia jail. The article includes emotionally evoking photographs of black fathers dressed in suits holding young black girls. Osunsami writes “All of the prisoners at Virginia’s Richmond City Jail admit they made poor choices, and could be better father” (Osunsami, 2013). The article goes on to describe how children pay the price for the poor choices made by “troubled men” who miss out on raising their children (Osunsami, 2013). The article is inflammatory in several ways, the first being that it expresses concern on behalf of the state surrounding the well-being and togetherness of black families and communities. Despite practices of forcibly separating black parents and children from each other under slavery and sexual violence perpetrated by the state against black men and women, and ongoing slandering of black parenting, reducing black fathering to child support money; the article allows the state to pose as a guiding force for dysfunctional black parents.

            The article portrays the jail and larger criminal justice system as a benevolent but unfortunate solution to inherently criminal black behavior. The article portrays the state as paternal and caring for black girls, which is ironic in face of the fact that black women continue to be unfairly criminalized and viciously negatively stereotyped. Welfare discourses and practices and the Criminal justice system portray and treat poor black women as if they shouldn’t exist and as if they are a burden to society by state and federal programs. Welfare programs and the criminal justice system specifically target black women with mechanisms of shame and victim blaming. Furthermore, the article’s sad tone around unfulfilled black fatherhood responsibilities implies that black fathers are failures instead of acknowledging the ways in systematic oppression violates black family structures.

            Perhaps the most troubling undertone of the article is that it attempts to highlight an instance in which prison officials graciously provide black fathers with an opportunity to be fathers in a way that exploits their privacy and dignity. Further, father daughter dances are part of a white cultural phenomenon that falls into a specific socio economic culture and thus the article presents a white-washed ideal of what being a good father looks like. Furthermore, the jail’s efforts to provide a father daughter dancer should be questioned for their agenda in attempting to instill yet another hetero-normative and religious based notion of family onto black communities.

Prison Industrial Complex - A Profitable Venture!

Bar Code

Next Window Please..

Who's Getting Rich Off the Prison Industrial Complex?

     Angela Davis's book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, describes a phenomenon that should make even staunchest capitalist shake in his or her proverbial boots.  In chapter 5, Davis describes the prison industrial complex (PIC) and how it came to being in the United States, and to some degree, other countries around the globe.  In terms of how the PIC came to being, Davis describes how the state, with its ever-shrinking budget, resorted to privatizing prisons, thereby making them for-profit organizations that have a responsibility to meet shareholder expectations around profitability.  As a result, privately-owned prisons are incented to keep people incarcerated, as the state pays them based on prisoner headcount.  In chapter 6, Davis also described what must happen in order to change this bleak scenario.  For starters, she describes decriminalizing activities that primarily target the poor and people of color, like drug possession laws.  Ultimately, Davis presents a compelling argument as to why prisons are truly obsolete from the perspective of preventing crime and rehabilitating perpetrators of crime.  I think her ultimate point of this book to highlight the notion that prisons exist for one reason only – to make their owners and stockholders rich.

     In concert with this theme, I have selected three different images/articles (see above links) that are complimentary to Davis’s arguments.  The first image is a barcode, the same ones found on just about everything you buy at a store, with a prisoner’s arms pushed out between the bars, to make the barcode look like a jail cell.  This image is an interesting metaphor for the PIC as it implies a commodification of prisoners, implying that there’s a profit to be made.  It also demonstrates how prisoners are dehumanized in American society, a notion supported even by our own vernacular – they are ‘prisoners’, not ‘people’, and more specifically, they are a product to be sold for profit, not a human life that should be rehabilitated and restored as a functioning member of society.

     The next link demonstrates the notion that people of color, and in particular black men, have a greater tendency to be incarcerated, and thereby commoditized, than to be supported by fair treatment laws such as Affirmative Action and education.  Personally, I find it interesting and horrific that the state will provide effectively unlimited support for institutions of incarceration, yet programs such as Affirmative Action receive little, if any, state support.  Additionally, capitalists from the same corporations that profit from the incarceration of millions in the U.S. quickly cry ‘Socialism’ when public programs are created to help poor communities and people of color.  Why is that?  Why is one scenario acceptable and the other considered a mortal sin?  More importantly, why do Americans, by-in-large, accept this dichotomy in general and the institutional racism it supports implicitly, yet at the same time preach freedom for all?  The answer must come from the same roots as the justification for the notion that “all men are created equal”, yet blacks continued to be enslaved when that famous phrase was coined.

     Finally, the third link is an article from the HBO series Vice.  This article calls out, by name, the profiteers from the PIC.  I’ll let the article speak for itself and not describe it in too much detail, other than the fact that my stomach literally turned while I was reading it.  The truly scary part is, these profiteers, instead of simply admitting that they are okay with earning money off the backs of prisoners, have convinced themselves that they are justified for effectively promoting yet another means for commoditizing the poor in general, and black men specifically.  Conscious folks might refer to this as modern-day slavery, primarily because, it is…..

Negative Effects of the Privatization of Education

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/4_ways_privatization_is_ruining_our_education_system_partner/

            Just as prisons have started to be privatized over the years, so has the education system. With this privatization of both structures, there have come negative consequences.  In the article, Four Ways Privatization is Ruining our Education System; Buchheit brings to light the issues of privatization.  Private schools are not improving education, just as private prisons are not improving the incarceration system in our country.

Having the profit motive distorts the goals of education just as profit-motivating prisons have perverted the system. When you bring profit into play it is hard to see any honest motive in these systems other than making money, and at that, making money at any cost even that of the student/prisoner.  As Buchheit states, “Our nation’s impulsive experiment with privatization is causing our schools to look more like boardrooms than classrooms” (2014). This goes for the prison system as well. Only in the case of prisons, sentences are extended and sentences are harsher for miniscule crimes in order to support the private corporation funding the prison. As Buchheit discusses, the profit motive leads to “questionable ethics among school operators…” just as in the prison system. Davis discusses in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete, the affects of systems where prisoners are treated as less than human, in a very unethical manner.

Buchheit discusses the third reason in the higher education system, as why privatization of education is wrong.  As the prison system takes advantage of the poor, in criminalizing those in poverty at a higher rate than middle class and upper class counterparts, so does privatized college education.  As Buchheit quotes in his article, “At the college level, for-profit schools eagerly clamor for low-income students…who conveniently arrive with public money in the form of federal financial aide” (2014). This same issue goes for private prisons, feeding off of the government for money, getting a certain amount for each prisoner they hold in the facility each year.

 Finally, in both the privatized school and prison, there is unequal treatment/help available. Lower-performing children are being left behind in the education system, and prisoners who need mental treatment or rehabilitation are being left to rot in cells versus getting the help they need. While there are some differences in the privatization of schools and the prison system, both have, clearly, very negative effects.

Lets Stop and Frisk Justin Beiber

The Rockefeller Drug Laws enacted in the 70's helped muster the political will, and embedded the otherization and zero tolerance mentalities required to maintain the current Stop and Frisk laws in New York. Indeed, black and brown citizens there had to be first stripped of their citizenry (like the pushers) in order to render them appropriate targets for police. 

Who has rights, and who has the right to suspend those rights? How did we get to a place in society where we permit people to be stopped on the street,  only 3% of whom are actually doing something illegal? 

I believe many of these answers lie with Rockefeller's systematic disregard for the lives of black and brown people in New York, and his desperate grasping at a "solution" to a crime. 

White, middle class folks never think of their sons or daughters as pushers, in need of frisking. When they do conceptualize them as addicts, they are the medicalized, patient sort in need of careful observation and a clam, supportive environment in which to recover. 

There is a dual narrative of personal responsibility here, one we've seen clearly outlined in Justin Beiber's recent arrest. White kids just got mixed up with the wrong crowd, where as inner city youth of color could have made the choice of abstinence, made the choice to stay away from gang activity. It would be very hard to say there was a direct inverse relationship, but does degree of personal responsibility increase as claim to citizenship decreases? 

Lets think about this: with less guaranteed citizenship, one has to prove a lot more to neighbors, teachers, and police. Patriotism and loyalty to the state (and its laws) have to constantly be re-inscribed with invasions of the body and private space and time. Once one stop and  frisk is preformed, there is no guarantee that that act of exoneration will last even until the next street over, for there is no lasting proof or signature of innocence. 

The irony, which I'm sure has not been lost on this crowd, is that Justin Beiber is not a citizen of this country, unlike the countless victims of invasive stop and frisk procedures, and yet his chances of being deported or facing any meaningful retribution are slim to none.  Maybe he defies the linear relationship between papers and personal responsibility? 

In conclusion, FRISK BEIBER. 

"A New Development in Prison Reform"

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/01/a_new_development_in_prison_reform.html

In her blog post entitled “A New Development in Prison Reform” on Colorlines.com, Carla Murphy looks at current political efforts to move away from mass incarceration.  Julilly Kohler-Hausmann’s article “’The Atilla the Hun Law’: New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Making of a Punitive State” looks at how politicians were able to shape the public opinion by changing public policy.  There was an apparent shift in the dominant narrative surrounding the drug user from the 1950s to the 1970s, which got a huge push with Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s claims that drug users were the ultimate menace to society.   While incarceration rates since then have continued to rise, particularly for people of color, Murphy points to certain parts of the 2014 omnibus spending bill that could change that trend.  That is not to say that Republicans and Democrats have similar motivations and goals from lowering mass incarceration rates, but their different ideologies have led to this similar goal.  “…whether motivated by concern for civil liberties, unsustainable state and federal budgets, or a New Testament-inclination for giving second chances, one fact trumps all differences: The United States houses by far the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million people as of year-end 2011” (Murphy 2014).  In the omnibus spending bill, the Charles Colson Task Force will be created and it is said that it “will figure out fairer sentences – like, not locking people up for a decade because of a period of drug addiction.”  Also in the spending bill is more funding for the Second Chance Act which aims to rehabilitate.  While these are the goals of the Democrats, Republicans are championing this as a way to reduce government spending.  According to freelance journalist and Ph.D. student at John Hopkins, David Dagan, “…undoing mass incarceration is becoming as orthodox on the Right as building it was just a few short years ago.”  While it could be argued that Dagan may not be qualified to make a claim like that, the evidence is in the bipartisan efforts that are being made.  While the motivations behind this movement are different, this could be the start to a radical shift in the way the prison system works in the United States.

Week 11: Heroin Today

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/03/27/new-hampshire-heroin

This article was very interesting because it gave me some insight as to what is happening today with Heroin as opposed to the history of heroin use in our country. As the article states, in New Hampshire, heroin use had doubled over from 2007 to 2012. This is incredibly scary to see, especially because the "War on Drugs" is still so intense and overbearing in our country. It seems curious to me that while we are cracking down and getting tough on drugs, the drug use is still rising. 

Something interesting that I noticed was the location of this article, New Hampshire. When I looked up some quick statistics about the state of New Hampshire, I discovered that it is 94% white (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33000.html) and this is extremely troubling. It only seems to point more to the fact that this "War on Drugs" crusade in America is more racially driven then I ever could of imagined. Our government is not cracking down on drug use, they are cracking down on drug use by non-white, particularly African American drug users. Heroin use has doubled in this state, and not surprising enough, the majority of this state is white. 

Then, as you scroll down the article and read on through the interview with Col. Bob Quinn the director of the New Hampshire’s Division of State Police, you find another interesting fact. 85% of those in prison in the state are there due to substance abuse problems.  One statistic he didn’t include was how many of those prisoners are non-white.

The interviewer, Robin Young at one point brings up the idea of “moving the beds on the front end instead of beds behind bars…to treatment centers” (Young, 2014). This is another aspect that connects with our readings this week. It is interesting to see a new shift emerging back to the idea of treating the victim over punishing the criminal when it comes to drugs. I would like to ask the head of police though, who is being treated and who is being sent to jail? This is only because we can’t help but wonder if only those middle class white citizens are being treated while the African American drug users stay as criminals needing to be punished.

Proof Chicago is The American Dream*.............................................*for whites only

http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/how-awesome-chicago-show-them/
As I skimmed through recent Facebook posts this morning, a particular video that came up on my news feed a couple of times peeked my interest. The subtitle on this article acclaimed Chicago to be "proof" of the American Dream. Now, I knew this was bull%^&* before I even watched the video, because let's be honest, the American Dream is attainable for some, but for the majority of society, it's just what it suggests -- a dream. So maybe I went into it with the wrong attitude, but this video really annoyed me. It called Chicago a city that "talked the talk" of the American Dream, claimed that in each neighborhood one could witness "migration into assimilation." Sure, this might be true for some, I don't doubt it. Yet as I watched this video I couldn't help but think of the African American population in Chicago, the large majority of whom live in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods on the South or West side. I realized the source of my frustration came from the fact that those people who had posted this video (caption: "love my city!") actually believed this was true. And how couldn't they? They are white, were raised in the suburbs, have affluent parents who “made it” – their life is the American Dream. As a byproduct of extreme segregation present in the Chicagoland area, privileged individuals become so far removed from inner city life that ten miles apart turns into a world away.

                        

African American Population by Census Tract in Chicago, 2011  

(photo from wikipedia)

Before posting a cynical response to this testament to “how awesome Chicago is,” I did a little research. As of 2011, 63% of African American residents of Chicago lived in racially segregated neighborhoods identifying as 95% or more black.1 This figure is a measly 6% lower than the level of neighborhood segregation that existed in Chicago prior to the civil rights movement. 34% of black residents of Chicago live in poverty, compared to 11% of whites.2 Furthermore, the median household income for Chicago whites is nearly double what it is for the black population.3 Just as my own experience had suggested, I found racial segregation, and its accompanied concentration of poverty, to be a pervasive issue for the city of Chicago.
   4


So, if Chicago is “the Great American city,” a place that “represents America to its core,” then it is time America retire its title as the land of opportunity and equality for all. Some might call me cynical, but I just see it as being realistic.


1 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/african-american-percentage-poverty-unemployment-schools-segregation/Content?oid=10703562
2 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/african-american-percentage-poverty-unemployment-schools-segregation/Content?oid=10703562
3 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/african-american-percentage-poverty-unemployment-schools-segregation/Content?oid=10703562
4 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/african-american-percentage-poverty-unemployment-schools-segregation/Content?oid=10703562