The Black Male Rejection of Black Women

Why do black men seem to prefer white women, at least over black women?  Is it the desire that gravitates black men towards white women, or is it the rejection of black women? When looking at the fabrication of American culture and the doctrine of race relations this helps us explore a route to the answer.

 

When we look at it from an historical context black men were effeminized and placed in an infantile state, not in the sense of being homosexual (I don’t believe you can systemically make someone gay), but he was taken out of his role of being the protector that societies and cultures ascribe most men to be. The black man was forced to be a witness of the black woman being raped by a white man, and he couldn’t do anything about it. This reinforced that power structure that put whiteness above blackness and masculinity above femininity. Even though these incidents didn’t turn most black women away from black men it did however, as one can assume messed with the mans psyche to know that his protector role was void and suppressed towards his slave owner. He spends his whole life trying to vie for the approval of his master, due to this power structure.

 

Aside from obtaining freedom the closet thing to being one with the white man was having a white woman. From the definition of white in the dictionary and also by law white has always been defined as pure, fair, just, clean, and unpolluted. However, when we look at black it’s always menacing, evil, threatening, and intimidating. When at times it was against the law for a Negro not to just marry, but even stare at a white woman. The definitions of what iswhite and black psychologically places white in a superiority mental context, but the laws systemically place white woman at the top of the food pyramid and now becomes forbidden fruit for the black male. A white woman’s word was always held in high regard. Even in today’s culture; if a white woman cries wolf we believe her. She exemplifies what womanhood is outside of what feminist argue the white woman is held in high regards when we think of women. Even if a black man doesn’t necessarily want a white woman his curiosity leads him towards her just to see what the big deal is. Even though he may love black women he’s being socialized to see her as less moral and nothing more than bearing of slave children. So in hindsight he sees the black woman as nothing more than someone amplifying and rendering black people’s own oppression through her vagina even if it’s by rape. These same issues rear their head in the 21st century, but in different forms.

 

From music videos and even in erotic videos white women are celebrated over black women, especially in cases if the white woman has a body image that many associate black women with. In the terms of wide hips, big butts, and darker skin (tans), even though part of the problem is priming only a woman of colors physical attributes as opposed to her mind white woman in most cases will always be favored even in erotic forms. In the physical we constantly reinforce the image of white women above black women.

 

You can go to any black barbershop in America and when the topic of interracial dating occurs when have been taught as minorities to always put women of color into competition with white women.

 

Some black women are porn stars, strippers, in half naked in music videos, on welfare, have children by multiple men etc., but they aren’t the only ones and all black women are not limited to that. We have black women going and graduating from college at higher rates than us, but when those women are always looked at as too strong. We shame them and prime women on their sexuality, but act like they are breaking down the family dynamic by ignoring “family norms,” but when white women are ignoring these norms we look at they as women who have their own and don’t us look at us as a meal ticket. Times are changing, even though black women and black men never really had that housewife role, black men are now trying to have work and be a housewife. This sort of reinforces that notion of slavery when a woman had no choice but to submit to their master and now the black man is trying to emulate his oppressor by showing dominance over the black woman in his life. So this gives them an unconscious excuse to go towards white women because they “don’t complain,” and “know their role.”

 

White women in a lot of cases are looked as status symbols, they garner acceptance psychologically, or at least believed they do. Even if the white woman and black woman are from the same socioeconomic situations the white woman isn’t judged off of that from a black man’s perspective, but the black woman shamed for it. No matter if a white woman has kids or not, on welfare, or in good financial shape, a gold digger, or you leave off of her she will always be deemed as a trophy and highlighted for all qualities while black woman are shamed for their faults. We judge white women on an individual basis, but we cast all black women into stereotypical paradigms until they prove us different. As we look back in time black women are good for us to lay down with, but white or lighter women are who black men want to be shown with. Many black men such as me still love black women, but society has tried to systemically and psychologically attempted to keep us hating ourselves.

 

I don’t feel as though black men consciously just want to be with white women as some may make it seem, but I feel as though they are being taught to reject black women as a whole because they are still deemed as bad, sinister, and only used a means for child bearing. We still believe that their vaginas are the means for being diggers, putting black men on child support and the reason why taxes taken out of our check (even though more whites benefit). Even though the first love we receive is from our black mothers, over time society tries to teach us to hate them.

Who Loves Our Black Boys?

Are black boys the target of a racist society, or are we merely criminalizing them to the point where they're fearful of one another? Who really loves black boys aside from their mother? Have we actually taken a moment to ask young black boys, “Who really loves you?” Do we lead young black males towards a path that primes them only to see their masculinity as a beginning and end of who they really are? We have been taught through homophobe principles not to show compassion and love for them because that’s not masculine, who really cares?  How do we end this cycle of autophobia? 

We have a generation of black males that walk around with their heads held down and always looking over their shoulder because they may be Zimmerized or shot dead because their music  is too loud. We have men walking with their backs slouched which allows others to ride them and make them feel ashamed for who they are. When you walk with your back straight no one can slow you down because you’re moving with a purpose. We have cohort of brown and dark skin boys who are afraid, intimidated, and made to feel dishonest about themselves; this begins the process of what Dr. Cornel West likes to call the niggerization of a people. We have become so fearful of ourselves that we are willing to consent to our own domination from street gangs all the way to enlisting into the armed services to kill people that look like us in foreign countries.We are the pawns of social assassination, all while being economically commodified. Blacks boys have to come to the context of why am I hated, why am I unsafe, and why am I unprotected? What is it about me that strike fear not only in white folks, but my own damn people?  Who is there to teach these boys not to accept this and fight against it? Without getting a check in return or personal notoriety, who is really standing up to tell the truths of these black boys who have been stigmatized, victimized, and made to believe that are a non-factor in the grand scheme of things.

The life of black boys has been made into a mockery and they are degraded daily. Whether it’s for their hairstyles, the way they dress, and even the music that they listen to. We as a race have contributed to the ways that these boys are being criminalized in this society. We speak on their dreads; tell them to make sure all your tattoos are covered because we don’t want them to be suspected or to be offensive towards cooperate (white) America. We complain about their sagging pants, but how often do we raise their expectations of what they can be? We criminalize their dress, but what are they dressing up for, or more importantly what are we dressing them up for? It seems that now it is a capital offense to be a young, black, male in the country and if you’re outside you can be shot like wild game, or at least in the state of Florida.

It seems that we are only cares once it too late. We only tell them that they are beautiful once their parents and the community are grieving. Our young people need to know other men are pulling their boot straps up so that they can fight for their rights so that we can eliminate the terror from their heart.  Revolution doesn’t have to start with a reaction to a tragedy or oppression; you can ignite a revolution by just having a love in your heart for the people. We have groups of men who have made it out from socially neglected areas, but we have forgotten about the ones left behind. It would be idiotic to expect everyone to work for the cause, but we need more men who are willingly to bring back those degrees to the hoods they left and uplift these young boys who don’t get the love that they deserve. Folks get so worried about their careers, promotions, their status, and not making the oligarchs and plutocrats upset that they are afraid to tell the truth, or they begin to take the role of head field slaves. Not all, but some of the black elite use their status as a means to talk down on others who may not have had the opportunity to be afforded an education, not just at public schools, but the illustrious private schools from Yale to Tuskegee. We have elites who think they are better than the less fortunate. Too many of us who are college graduates use that piece of paper as means and justification to devalue others of our race to the point where we leave them out of the positions that the Martins, W.E.B.s, and others were trying to get us out.  Don’t let these made up views of us being the exception dilute the truth.  

Once we are afraid to tell the truth we allow ourselves as adults to remain niggerized that we remain adapted to injustice, give up, and ignore the indifferences that occur and leave our boys lost with no none to aspire to follow. We have somehow adopted this ideology that we have to make it out the “ghetto” and never look back, but it was a time when we thought of the ghetto it wasn’t anything demeaning or disgraceful, but it was where a whole contour of people came together and had love for one another, but now since we are in a time where the counterrevolution is winning we try to divide and separate ourselves from one another.

Not to ignore the work that has been and is being done, but the counterrevolution is winning. They tell us to take our 96 and 97% collective vote to elect state legislatives who make laws to protect us, but since our issues sit outside of the given agenda of a conservative who has special interest groups pulling his/her strings, and left wing liberals who don’t have a spine to walk with, but who also have money thrown at them to care about other social issues result in us getting left out. We continue to be made to feel that we are invisible. The youth are not looking for handouts; they are just for someone to love them and to tell the truth about the suffering that they are enduring. Not to marginalize black boys from other groups (which all are precious), we as men especially must not be afraid to express our love for them.

Even if we may disagree ideologically about what needs to be done, we must all care. Not for any status, promotion, recognition, but we must care for the people. The fighting of oppression is not a sprint, but a long distance race, and the only thing that we get you to that finish line is to have a strong love in your heart for the people. We can spend time blaming single mothers, the prison industrial complex, white folks, educations, economics, but at the end of it all who really loves these boys, besides their mothers? When was the last time told a black boy you loved him and wanted him to do well? Like Marvin Gaye said in the summer of 1971, “Save The Babies.”

Who really cares? If you won’t tell them, I will be strip of my “masculinity,” to express to those boys that I love them.

 

Why Some Make It Out Of The Hood (My Response)

On August 27, 2013 I was presented with the question on why some make it out of the hood and others do not. Through countless days, hours, and years of studying race relations primarily poverty stricken areas I can honestly say I don’t know. No one can really know, not even a Nero-Scientist can tell you what propels one individual as opposed to another. Especially when they share similar experiences living in the, “hood.” 

We can talk about every policy, law, and institutionalized practice that keeps blacks in the hood, but when thinking about what gets the select few out is the question. W.E.B. Du Bois authored The Talented Tenth which didn’t answer the question, but stated the responsibilities for those who would make it out to help those who weren’t afforded the resilience to excel past their peers. 

The majority who don’t make it out of the hood have what I would like to call, “hood mentality.” They don’t see life outside of their zip code and life outside of their circumstances. At birth they are given a disadvantage that perpetuate a low ceiling for them.  When an individual has no incentive to better themselves or anything to aim for they start to live day to day instead of anticipating a future. Even when you look in the media from news outlets and even music, people are consistently reminded that they might not live to see 25 or that they will end up being a welfare queen. Many of “us” in the hood also have a false sense of inclusion into dominate society.  They feel that maybe if I can buy this or put an image then I have made it. 

If you look at history in the 1500’s all Jews lived in ghettos. They didn’t have exceptions because Christians during that time made sure that if a Jew tried to escape that they would be placed there. In contemporary times blacks are not segregated by color into lower income communities, but by policy they have been grouped there. Also they have been grouped there by gentrification. These types of practices have been going on for so long that many develop a “hood nigga psychological” complex. In today’s thought process we have been made to believe that hood and black coincides with one another. For those who don’t accept this and reject these notions (The Talented Tenth) they are looked at as acting white, sell-outs, and less than black by their “hood” counterparts. Even though no one will openly say that they want to struggle or live in poverty, many will tell you that they don’t want to be rejected by their own. 

Even though we have given ourselves low ceilings we has a collective have refused to work together to break through the glass, and even though some may not be spiritual we still use the principle of GOD as a deterrent by just believing that he will make a way instead of individuals taken it upon themselves to put in the work. 

For those who made it of the hood without the use of entertainment and sports can be looked at as simply wanting it more. They reject every negative notion about themselves. In my opinion the only way to make it out of these conditions is to believe that you have a higher ceiling. Even though you know racism and discrimination exist you must always keep in the forefront of your brain that you belong here and you just as good as your counterparts, if not better. Of course it is best to avoid earlier pregnancy and incarceration because those things can just return you back into that same cycle of poverty. To make it out you have to have discipline, especially the ability to deal with the processes of obtaining new information. The brain consumes about 20-30 percent of all the calories that the body intakes daily. When a person is consuming information that rapid increase of information can cause many to feel tired or bored. Those who don’t accept these feelings are able to confront limitations that are presented to them. The gap between the talented tenth and those who go to jail or those who are stuck in the hood isn’t that much different when you focus on it with wide lenses. Few take that leap of faith and many take steps back and look at the probability of the outcome by past history and expectations that they or others may have for them.

Our choices ultimately depend on fear. Do you anticipate the banquets that life will cater to us, or are you scared? Those who make it have a purpose in life. They don’t believe that they just live here, they believe in living. From working with secondary educational students I can tell at an early age who will make it, not by listening to their words, by observing their actions. When you look at a person’s everyday choices that will reveal what they believe is central and that in-turn will drive them there. If you take steps towards trying to be a street nigga that’s how you will be, but if your actions are propelled towards learning that will bring you into that demographic. We must also note that an educated demographic doesn’t coincide with hood, even though the hood may be a part of their studies. The difference is that you just study the hood from the sidewalk. 

At the end of it all are conscious actions and beliefs are the ones the run the show and get us out of the hood. No government program, scholarship, speech, or black president can. The only thing that brings us out of the hood is ourselves and willpower. 

Where Has The Love Went (Misogyny in Hip-Hop)

“I hear my conscious call telling me I need a girls whose as sweet as a dove, but fuck that my names “ “ and you know I’m a thug, if you drunk off love I suggest you get over it, ma cry me a river build a bridge and get over it.”

Many will argue that with the black women participating in the feminist movement along white women this helped bring a divide amongst black families and put them at odds ends instead of standing strong together. Other may also attest to the low levels of black men receiving degrees in higher education compared to black men or the high level of black men in the caught in the judicial system. Hip-Hop and RnB are important to the black culture like no other genre, it was partially built upon getting the messages that were affecting the community to the masses, but if you’ve been listening later it is apparent that the love is gone.

It was a point where love was profess more than going to the club and standing on couches with overpriced bottles in your hand. It was a time where all you needed in this life of sin was you and your girlfriend.  There was a time where it was normal for artist to get on the mic and profess that they needed love, but now the genre has become so overly misogynistic that sex is the only main concern. Even the new era of RnB cats have stopped singing about the quest to find love and different scenarios that revolve around it. Music has taken a detour in finding the girl that you’ll take a life sentence for and make your wife to only being concerned about the one you can have for one night. The question is; whether today’s music is just indicative of the times that we are living in, or is it another avenue for the male dominant society to victimize, exploit, and exploit women.  

Many use the argument well musicians didn’t invent domestic violence, they didn’t invent the “B” word, they aren’t responsible for the decline of marriage in the black community and the high levels of single parent households, but every time you use your stage (the mic) and dehumanize women through song you become a part of the problem and divert yourself from the solution. No one is calling for every rapper or singer to get back to making songs about love, but when you elevate a pimp, one of the most despicable figures to a high status you’ve done something wrong. Even though many artist have used their voice to stand up against these issues, most run into the hurdle of not being heard because their voice box doesn’t reach a wider demographic. It was be ignorant to ignore the appeal that Hip-Hop has to the world, things that can be deemed as detrimental are starting to becoming normalize in popular society.

For instance stripping is one of those things, instead of showering women with love and affection, the newer generation has decided to make naked women a commodity in which they shower her with dollar bills for dancing and taking her clothes off. Even though artist didn’t invent stripping they still have to be held accountable. Glamorization and glorification are an excessive concentration of things that are preexisting, you are just mirroring these oppressions back to the people and causing harm. Even if rappers don’t want to be Drake and find their love they still have a social responsibility to show a woman’s intellectual cognitive ability to do more than shake her ass.

We all understand that in Hip-Hop trends comes and go, but I thought we were taught that love supposed to last forever and not just for a couple decades. Are we the to blame that we are hearing less of “All I Need,” and more of “As Long As My Bitches Love Me?” In reality the lack of love amongst blacks didn’t begin nor will it end with Hip-Hop, but lowering the complexity of black female identity to just objects such as breast, thighs, and ass is brought is further away from adoring her heart, soul, and brain.

When we kill the love and heart then the soul goes shortly thereafter.

Black Television Before & After Cosby

"I try to tell her about how they show us on the TV screen, but all she want me to do is unzip her jeans"

At my age I wasn’t able to fully take in the cultural impact that shows like The Cosby Show had when it was premiered. My generation only experienced this iconic show through TV Land and Nick at Nite re-runs. Even though it is a fictitious and currently not airing any episodes it still till this day is mentioned in college classrooms across the nation as the leading example of a presentation of a black family that was painted in a luminous light and also breaking stereotypes. 

The Cosby show was one of its kind, a true trendsetter in the sense of the word. In television, "Before Cosby" much of the black family life was depicted of a poor lower class family struggling, but used jokes just to buy our attention till next week’s episode. After Cosby blacks are still portrayed in somewhat of a negative light, even though a handful of sitcoms followed the blueprint of the Cosby Show many after just showed blacks as buffoons, aggressive, criminals, and flamboyant. Even though some blacks, just like all races fit in these same categories, blacks disproportionally are promoted to mass audiences in negative fashion therefore perpetuating these images as facts to viewers.

A survey done by the Boston Globe in 1991 showed that young children and older adults disproportionally saw the Huxtable’s as a realistic expectation as to what black family life was like, even though by statistics the wealth that the Huxtable’s possessed was very rare in the black community. Attitudinal data suggest that the more television we watch the more likely we are to hold ideas that contradict each other. For example most people know just by looking at statistics that majority of black couples aren’t lawyers and doctors, but at the same time seeing a positive image of that on TV suggest that it isn’t far fetched and that it is normal to come across that in everyday life.

Before Cosby we had shows like Good Times & What’s Happenin’, they were both black family sitcom shows that were comedic strips, but showed black families in low economical classes. These shows were built just like the Cosby Show aside from the fact that The Cosby Show's family were doing better financially. Even though I wasn’t of age to witness the dynamic altering of race and class in America this was still something very monumental for Black America.

This shift in modern television not only brought sitcoms back to the forefront, but for a good few years blacks were taking out of working class roles and places as professionals on our weekly TV screens. Blacks were now in roles as top police officers, lawyers, professors, and business owners. Even though many of us won’t admit it The Cosby Show and others that followed gave us a new direction to aspire to follow. Cliff and Claire were “step-parents” to some and inspiration for those who may never have anyone with a college degree in the home to motivate them. For those of other races who may have little to no contact with black families they could look at The Cosby Show as a model for how black families act and look at it as normal, instead of thinking of black families as they are portrayed in “reality TV,” shows.

After Cosby network sitcoms had a small run and they began to fade, soon they were replaced by “reality TV.” BET, VH1, MTV (all owned by Viacom) and many others decided to join the ranks in broadcasting our reality (I use that term loosely) to the masses for their consumption. These new shows place women in roles such as gold diggers and sponsor the idea that maybe if you sleep with someone of mild importance then maybe you can be famous too, even if it’s only by association. Most of the women are dealing with infidelity, on the search for love, or recovering from a difficult break-up. Even though women of all races, not just black go through these and it wouldn’t be reality if it was excluded, but it seems as though happy women in relationships always seem to be extinct or nonexistent in the realm of reality TV. Even though these lives may be real, it begs the question on whether or not other tales can be told?  We are presented with more women who have the, "She’s been with [such and such]" stigma, instead of being shown what she is doing for herself independently. I don’t see how anyone can see that these shows are a portrayal of reality, maybe it gives them an escape from difficulties in their lives that they are going through. Viewers have accepted these shows and look at them as the norm in The Black American Experience. These shows have taken the concerns that many have of fictitious Tyler Perry movies and showed that they are reality, even if they are exaggerations.

Even though critics may argue that The Cosby Show ignored institutionalized racism and ignored obstacles that many blacks face with upward mobility obtainment, or that they may reinforce the notion that blacks lack of achievement could be attributed to laziness, lack of education, and many other things that can be attributed to other oppressions that they face from outside forces. Those arguments however beg the question is it enough to be acknowledged on shows like Love & Hip-Hop, Flavor of Love, Basketball Wives, and many others or should we want respect from these stations that broadcast our “realities” to millions daily? Is thirty to sixty minutes of entertainment worth looking like buffoons and coons on modern day minstrel shows? When looking at blacks on TV think of this Jay-Z quote, "When you see me, see you." 

Darkness on the South-side

I see more needles with dried dark red blood in the street than kids happily playing in them,

Babies crying for food, and mothers crying oceans because they don’t have the means to feed them,

Schools are closing yearly, but prisons seem like they are opening daily,

Cost of living is skyrocketing, but social funds are plummeting,

I just want to be a lawyer, a scientist, or somebody with a Ph.D but I’m 6’3 and my community says that I should try to live out hoop dreams,

I have more access to a ball court than a library,

I see more despair than hope, more junkies and crack fiends, than people that look like me living out million dollar dreams swiping black cards for expensive things,

Gentrification, felonies, kids misdiagnosed with mental retardation, but a lack of youth leading my country to become a better nation,

Will I overcome or just become another statistic stuck at the bottom,

Either my people are dying, or they are clocking in 9 to 5’s and 10- 6’s minimum wage living at 63 because 70 for us is when we are retiring,

Not because they want to, but to keep the heat on and to give Junior a couple presents for Christmas,

Streets lights are shining like a thousand watt light bulb, but those are the only things bright on Chicago’s southside,

Mother’s cry, their babies die, and children wonder why,

They wonder why it has to be like this,

Sometimes we just want to see the our side shine, brighten up our day like the Chicago Skyline,

But no we walk in darkness on Chicago’s Southside, looking for hope that our former Senator, and current President promised us, but no one can see the pain because the sun doesn’t shine on the Soutside.

Everyday Slaves

"Education and incarceration are connected. As a society we can choose either to emphasize a proactive investment in the stability of families and education of children, or to emphasize a reactive investment in incarceration and forms of carceral punishment. In short we can both build and invest in schools and equality of opportunity in education or we can invest in prisons." Michael Glennon

 

Today mass incarceration is a fundamental practice in American society. The United States has placed more blacks in the criminal justice system in the forms of prison terms, parole, and/or probation than were in slavery. More blacks are under supervision than in any time in America’s elongated history. We are in America were freedom is only a privilege for some of it’s citizen, but for others they are treated like walking felons. Prisons were first formed to put up Americas most dangerous criminals, but now these same prisons have been sold to private entities that profit off of these “criminals.” We have since gone from an inconsistent justice system to a power structure that uses mass punishment as an incentive to incarcerate citizens.

Prison was formed as a social means to deter members of society from going to prisons which would in turn keep the number of inmates low, but private institutions have incentives to keep numbers high so that they can maximize profit. Under The 13^th Amendment it is constituted in language that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Since 1980 crime rates in America have steadily decreased, but incarceration has rapidly increased partially due to The Reagan Era.

I know it seems heaven sent, but we aint ready to see a black president, it’s not enough to conceal the facts that the penitentiary packed and it’s filled with blacks...Instead of War on Poverty they got a War on Drugs so the police can bother me. Tupac

In 1971 Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term “The War on Drugs,” but President Reagan made it a race to incarcerate. In 1982 he announced that the nation was going to combat the Crack Epidemic. He promised drug free zones in school, workplaces, and increased drug treatment facilities. Another thing he promised was stiffer drug penalties. Many critics may argue whether his plan was implemented to effectiveness, but all won’t deny about Reagan carrying through his plan with stiffer penalties. In 1986 he did just that, in that year he signed a bill that used 1.7 billion dollars to fund his plan. Even though cocaine was more widely used, more costly, and the foundation of crack he kept those sentences levels stable for that drug, but raised mandatory minimum sentences for crack-cocaine. Many people looked at this as an attack on poverty stricken communities and low income areas. These new laws had mammoth effects on blacks. These policies did very little to diminish the amount of drugs on the streets, but increased the prison population to large proportions.

Even after leaving office Reagan passed the baton to President Bush who picked where Reagan left off. Even though many criminal justice scholars claimed that these policies would not reduce drugs use or the availability of drugs, but it would increase the prison population those claims went ignored. Instead the Bush Administration went ahead with a study that stated that mass incarceration would save tax payers 405,000 for every offender. Even though many economist showed that the data didn’t add up our government fed this propaganda to the masses and they ate it up. While they were digesting this, adolescents in lower income communities suffered.

Between 1980-1993 education, employment, and training programs were cut in half, but spending on correctional facilities went up 521%. In 2006 the State of California spent 8,000 dollars on average for a child in their school district, but invested 216,000 dollars for one juvenile inmate. So we must ask, what’s more important, educating our children to be productive, free thinking citizens, or investing them into a system that turns them into slaves?  75% of those in these juvenile inmates are illiterate by the 12^thgrade and less than 20% will have their high school diploma. This isn’t cause and effect, but a direct correlation. This is the science of criminology, and what sociologist study. When you cut education and invest in correction you are directly sending messages that the people you are sending out of school will be pushed right into a system of slavery. Many of these children will be many of the 13 million that are introduced to American prisons yearly. Many will visit these prisons for marijuana offenses. As of today 1 of every American is serving time behind bars where they are working for as much as .15 cents a day. Even though they are getting this minimal amount of income most will never see a single dime of it, or the .15 cents because most inmates checks go to pay legal, court, and restitution fees. So in a sense they are working for free and turned into modern day slaves while private cooperation’s make billions off of them. Only in America can a prison be put on Wall Street. How can a system that is stated to be for rehabilitation be on Wall Street, this seems like economical elevation?

Housing, feeding , and providing standard medical treatment to over six million people may seem like a financial burden, but to companies like CCA & GEO it’s a 70 billion dollar industry that they have invested in. These two cooperation’s only agreed to take over these states prisons only if they could get a guarantee from the state that they will stay 90% occupied. The problem is that even though the states would get pay-outs they would also be pressured to promote laws that would keep incarceration laws high.

No matter how fiscally responsible it may seem to pass over the prison industries to private companies it goes against what the justice system is suppose to stand for. Justice is fairness, not a monetary incentive for criminals, suspected criminals, and non-criminals to be handed over to cooperation’s whose sole concern isn’t rehabilitation, but concern is free labor. This system does not help those lost in the world to find avenues to better themselves or deter others on the street from deviant behavior instead it turns millions every year into modern day slaves. We have a justice system that had displaced minorities at an alarming rate in prisons with number identifications away from having their government names read in graduation lines.