(ThyBlackMan.com) American prison culture is often glorified in mainstream media with shows like Lockup being shown every weekend. But I have to tell you, as someone who has been in The County Jail before, there’s absolutely nothing glamorous about the American prison culture despite what the mainstream media portrays of it.
Today, there are more than 2 million people that are currently incarcerated in America which is more than the number of African people were incarcerated during the height of apartheid in South Africa and more than the number of African people were forcibly enslaved in this country in 1850. And about half of those 2 million people that are currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons are African people.
Some people wonder why is that?!? Well, I’m gonna explain why.
America is founded upon a colonial social system that has its roots in the enslavement of African people and the genocide of indigenous people. And it’s because of the parasitic capitalistic relationship that Africans have with the state that this toxic, corrosive, corrupt, and destructive social system has been allowed to permeate itself. It is also under this same system that we have no control over our own destiny, resources, lives, means of production because we are 
colonized people that are often left at the mercy of the state.
America is a country that’s extremely addicted to parasitic capitalism from the exploitation of free/cheap African labor from the prison system, the corporate plantation, and the NCAA system to parasitically extracting the resources from other countries like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan through U.S. Imperialistic wars.
In 1971, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon kicked off the so-called “War On Drugs” which was and is still to this day “War On African People” in America because The U.S. Establishment have always feared the idea of us putting our differences aside and unite to overthrow this colonial imperialistically parasitic capitalist system, so they started knocking off our political leaders like Malcolm X and MLK, killing 28 members of The Original Black Panther Party including incarcerating many other powerful political leaders at the time.
And then in the 1980s during the so-called “Reaganomics” era, Ronald Reagan, a notorious enemy of African people, started calling African women “welfare queens” when he first ran for president in 1976. During the “Reaganomics” era in the 1980s, there were stricter laws passed for possession of drugs like an young African male having a gram of crack in his pocket which would instantly carry a much harsher sentence as well as initiating massive sweeps in urban areas of arresting African people and giving them harsh sentences for drug trafficking, possession of drugs, or consumption of drugs. And it was also the decade in which brought about the rise of the private prison industry because they were built to specifically house as many African people as possible. The incarceration rate shot up dramatically more than 100% during the 1980s.
The mass incarceration epidemic however had reached its peak in the 1990s during The Clinton Era, when another notorious enemy of African people in Bill Clinton signed mandatory sentencing laws that became one of the most vicious and destructive colonial laws ever passed in The Violent Crime Bill of 1994 in which more African people were incarcerated during his time in office than any other president in recent U.S. History. The 1994 Violent Crime Bill was also very destructive to our community for other reasons
1) it put 100,000 more murderous pigs in our community
2) funded $10 billion to build more private prisons to specifically lock up more African people
3) It also allowed African children in particular as young as 13 to be tried as adults for violent crimes which later led to another notorious enemy of African people in Hillary Clinton referring to them as “superpredators” in a notorious speech she made in January 1996.
A note that I want to make about The 1994 Violent Crime Bill was that this vicious and destructive colonial law was also supported by house negroes from so-called activists, pastors, and political leaders in our community without realizing the negative, destructive implications that it would have on our community and the destructive effects of the bill still greatly affect our community to this day.
As well as the pseudo-conscious and pseudo-intellectual folks out there that constantly push this myth of the symptoms of colonialism “destroying” our family structure and statements like those promotes and perpetuates the capitalist nuclear family structure that’s common in our community and greatly downplays how the African community has historically functioned as a family.
These pseudo-conscious and pseudo-intellectuals in our community will always fight these meaningless battles against the colonial symptoms that they claim is “destroying” our family structure, but can’t and won’t outright attack the #1 culprit that’s mostly destroyed our family structure over the past 20+ years: the colonial social system/the state.
Over the past 20+ years, our family structure has been greatly decimated by mostly mass incarceration that the system has used to forcibly remove the parents from the lives of our youth and into their prison system to be used as economic commodities for them.
A notorious example of the harsh sentence given to African people for nonviolent drug offenses is when an African man named Mario Lloyd was one of the biggest drug dealers in Chicago during the 1980s and then he was arrested and later given 15 life sentences for felony drug trafficking. They not only incarcerated him, they also incarcerated his mother, brother, and sister. The system basically destroyed this guy’s family with these draconian sentences and it’s egregious.
Mass Incarceration is a form of genocide against African people because of not only the disgusting, vile, inhumane, and just horrendous conditions that currently exist inside the colonial prisons across the country.
It’s also a form of genocide against our people for several reasons.
1. The rapes that happen against African women by corrupt colonial prison cops.
2. The psychological abuse that African inmates often endure in colonial prison.
3. The horizontal violence against African prisoners coming from other African prisoners that are caused by the inhumane, genocidal conditions of the colonial prisons.
4. The killings of African inmates particularly by corrupt colonial prison cops.
5. Takes away The African Nation’s ability to reproduce future offspring by continuously locking up African men and African women.
6. The sterilization against African women that are currently happening inside colonial prisons that are being carried out by the state that takes away their ability to give birth to their kids.
7. Many of our sons and daughters grow up without their parents in the home which in turn not only causes them to go down dark paths but are also vulnerable to sexual abuse from pedophiles and vulnerable to being kidnapped by the foster care system (an arm of The State)
I’ve been personally affected by mass incarceration ever since my childhood when my the state took away my oldest brother on a nonviolent non-drug related charge when I was just a little boy. I’ve had some of my old homies from my old neighborhood that have been incarcerated by the state and some of them are still incarcerated to this day. I’ve had some relatives that’s been incarcerated by the state and some of them are still incarcerated to this day. And I’ve had 5 of my 6 older brothers that have also been incarcerated in the pen and my two oldest brothers are still incarcerated by the state to this day.
The Conclusion – It’s important to support the demand to release all the African men, African women, and African children from these horrendous, inhumane, and genocidal colonial prisons.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)
