(ThyBlackMan.com) Recently in Maryland, The State opened up a new $35 million “youth detention facility” in Baltimore that The State claims “will change the lives of troubled youth”
I find it ironic, but not, that the state chose to open up this new “youth detention facility” in Baltimore, which has a notoriously corrupt police department that has a long, bloody history of killing urban people like Freddie Gray a few years ago that led to the rebellion from the urban community against the Baltimore Police Department.
But in the eyes of white America, the youth detention facility will lock up and keep those young “scary super predators” from urban areas from ever fighting back against them and their system.
But when I look at this recent news, I immediately see this as a continuation of the systemic criminalization and incarceration of urban youth under this very toxic, corrupt, and destructive social system.
Also, the system has this very toxic parasitic capitalistic appetite for free/cheap labor and criminalizing and incarcerating our kids. Our relationship with the prison system is a form of colonialism within itself because in order for the prison system to profit, young urban kids are also used as the fuel to generate money for the benefit of the colonial ruling class. The CCA, which is the largest private prison company in America, parasitically extracts approximately $2 billion in labor and wealth a year from urban communities across the country.
Under the current social system, our children have no future because they are constantly attacked, criminalized, and demoralized on a daily basis by the public school system, the criminal justice system, and the foster care system which are the three main arenas in which the state-sanctioned violence is deliberately inflicted against young urban kids on a daily basis.
Also, the Baltimore Public School System is one of the worst school systems in the country because of the horrendous abuse and egregious violations being committed against urban kids by that school system on a daily basis.
Like all other school systems in the country, The Baltimore Public School System has adopted and implemented the same vicious, oppressive, and blatantly discriminatory policies like the zero tolerance and dress code policies that systemically target and criminalize urban youth at a far disproportionate rate than colonial kids.
In fact, a few years ago, three young middle school urban girls in Baltimore were pepper sprayed, hit with a baton, and had their heads busted open by a Baltimore Police Officer, who of course got administrative leave and was never indicted for his role in assaulting the three young urban girls. This is one of the many examples of the terrorism that’s deliberately inflicted on our kids in the colonial education system on a daily basis.
The colonial education system has consistently shown time and time again that they truly don’t care about our children because they see our kids as “inferior” and shuffles them into these “youth detention facilities” which is part of the systemic tactic known as the school-to-prison pipeline.
The Conclusion – What we must do as a community is to come together as a collective and begin to take power and control over our own kids including teaching them a curriculum that they can specifically relate to and to also demand that all these police officers be removed from elementary, middle, and high schools in predominant urban areas.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)
