(ThyBlackMan.com) My eyes were closed a few minutes ago, as I sit on an airplane headed to speak at a conference on prisons at Boston University. It is during these quiet moments on the plane, during takeoff when there are no electronic devices allowed, that I sometimes reflect on my life: past, present and future.
During my most recent reflection, my mind traveled back to the 1980s, when the War on Drugs was in full effect, and black families were dropping like flies in a room full of bug spray. At that time, my greatest mentor and role model was my uncle Donald, who was more like an older brother to me than anything. Donald was just eight years older than I was and I followed him everywhere. I remember him as far back as I remember anyone.
I also remember being 11 years old and hearing the words “Donald got sent to jail again.” I sat in the backseat of the car, with my head leaned against the glass, tears rolling down my face. I wasn’t sure what he was being sent to jail
for this time, I only knew that he would no longer be home when I came to my grandmother’s house looking for him.
I remember the collect phone calls every day after school that I would receive from Donald, as I would curl up on the couch with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, talking to him for as long as I could. I would write letters to him every day at school, since I was failing most of my classes anyway and the teachers weren’t paying much attention.
I ended up writing letters to Donald until I was a grown man in my mid-thirties, and I keep those letters in my desk to this day. I might read them one day, but it’s just too painful to look at them right now. Eventually, Donald became the little brother and I became the big one. Most of our life together is marked by long conversations we had, as I tried to help one of my closest relatives fight through the mental illness that affects so many black men when they are sent to prison at an early age.
I am not sure what happened to Donald when he went to prison that first time. All I know is that he came out a different man than he was when he went in. His life became defined by hopelessness, addiction, disappointment, unemployment, misery, homelessness and irresponsibility. I remember more bad stories than good ones. We had too many suicidal conversations to remember; eventually, I just stopped trying.
Life with Donald never changed until he died last year. He’d been paralyzed after being hit by a car and dragged 80 feet down the street, giving him a serious spinal injury and severe brain damage. He died twice on the operating table and doctors couldn’t decide if he should get brain surgery first or surgery on his spinal cord. I’m not sure if he was drunk on the night of his accident, but I know he was homeless and it was cold. Eventually, a series of infections took his life, ending a personal journey that has my mind searching furiously to find the happy moments.
One of the reasons I hate the prison system so much is because our nation’s addiction to the incarceration of young black men stole one of my most important role models. It was also the home for my biological father, my younger brother, and the fathers of three of my “adopted” God children. The prison industrial complex is like a socialized version of the Ebola virus that stormed through the black community like a deadly wildfire, stealing parents out of homes like slave masters whisking away young black men to hang them from trees. It’s not too much to ask that our community receive reparations from a government that handed out 150-year prison sentences like drone strikes are being launched in the Middle East. This system is pure EVIL.
When I joined with Russell Simmons in our campaign to end mass incarceration, I didn’t quite know what I was doing. I am not an attorney, a criminologist or an expert on the prison system. I was just a black man who’d grown tired of seeing countless families torn apart by Americanized d***h camps. I operated almost solely on faith with the hope that the little bit of access we might have to the White House could be used to help other children avoid the pain I endured when my own role model was injected with the mental illness that would plague him for the next 30 years.
Every ounce of energy created from mourning the loss of my uncle was converted into a commitment to doing all that I could to combat the effects of mass incarceration on our community. I’ve tried to turn my anger into something positive, and dedicated my first two books to my uncle before he died. In some ways, my life was one of his proudest moments and he still lives inside my soul. It is with his spirit that I am able to muster the focus necessary to do all I can to help bring this nightmare to an end.
Ironically, his troubled life gave me a sense of purpose, reminding me that everything happens for a reason.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.