Prison Rape Indifference
The two links above paint an interesting and disturbing
picture of prison rape in the United States.
One shows two photos of a male and forces viewers to question their
own value judgment when regarding a perceived prisoner vs. a non-prisoner. The first photo shows the male in apparent
plain, unassuming attire, and asks the question, “Would you joke about this man
being raped?” The second shows the same
man, except he is now clad in the infamous orange prison jump suit with his
prison identification number stenciled across his chest. The caption on this photo reads, “How about
now?”
The implication these photos demonstrate is a phenomenon
that has almost become a perceived rite-of-passage for a prison inmate, as well as the
source of many jokes of poor taste in mainstream American culture – that of
prison rape. These photos challenge
mainstream discourse by humanizing the horrific act of prison rape (one might wonder how this act could ever become unhumanized), which
statistics demonstrate has significantly increased in the last ten years. Why would people deem it acceptable to
marginalize a rape victim because they happen to be located in a prison
setting, when it’s not as socially acceptable to do so to a non-inmate? What power-privilege dynamics might be at
play to justify this incongruity in the minds of mainstream Americans?
The next link is a story that highlights perceived racial
dynamics that allegedly drive most occurrences of prison rape. The article discusses presents the hypothesis that most
rape circumstances in male prisons involve a white male as the victim and a black
male (predominantly) and other white and 'Hispanic' males as the perpetrators. The author cites statistics to validate this
hypothesis. One must approach the debate
from a critical lens before positioning on the conclusions for this hypothesis;
especially in terms of the solutions he presents to mitigate prison rape. Through interviewing and survey techniques of
white, black, and Latino inmates and prison staff, he quotes several
black inmates as implying that blacks prefer to rape whites out of revenge for
oppression of blacks by whites historically and at present. He attempts to build a case around this point
but the conjecture and research he cites must be challenged before taken at
face value.
He concludes the article by stating that races should be
separated to protect the white man from rape, along with separating homosexuals
from the general population.
In my opinion, I find this article particularly interesting
because it’s written by a British man lecturing at the University of Hawaii and
it contains undertones of the inclination to subjugate the black man. The author uses statistics to make
implications that the white inmates are victims and the black inmates are the
perpetrators. I might be more inclined
to support the claims made in this article had similar tactics not been used
for centuries to subjugate black people, particularly black males, in this
country. I question the author’s
motives, especially when he makes it a point to state that a much larger
percentage of black males in prison are there for violent crimes, as opposed to
white males. He also makes several
references to ‘black racism’, again painting the picture of the black man as a
perpetrator. He seems unaware of the
fact that racism implies a power dynamic; even in the prison hierarchy the
black man doesn’t hold a position of privilege and, therefore, cannot be
racist.
I don’t deny that his statistics might be correct in that
white males are raped more than black or Latino males in prison. I also don’t argue that the perpetrators tend
to be black. What I do argue is the
picture this article paints of the black man because he’s black, not because of
any other contributing factors to the rape phenomenon. I also challenge the author’s ‘solutions’ to
this problem, because they invariable single out the white man as needing to be
saved. The evidence posed, in my
opinion, is very weak and does not support the solutions the author presented.
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