Swampland – Pt. 2: Rats

            Years ago, my younger son – then in Kindergarten – came home and announced at dinner that his best friend wasn’t speaking to him. When we inquired why, he matter-of-factly announced, “I told the teacher on him.” My immediate reaction was right out of “Sopranos”: “Son, dead finks can’t squeal.” He laughed and for weeks after that, as we would run around the yard, I would hear him giggle and repeat my words over and over, “dead finks can’t squeal.” It also gave my then wife and I a chance to instill a life lesson on our son, one I had to call on a number of times since my arrest: Namely, unless there is an imminent danger of harm to someone, I won’t be a teller.

            Rats – no one in prison is as despised as a rat, a guy who goes to those in charge and tells on his fellow inmates. And yet, this system couldn’t survive without guys ratting each other out. There is no honor in telling. Usually the guy doing the telling is already implicated in his own wrongdoing. “Tell us what you know and we’ll go easy on you.” Too often, that is what passes for “good” police work.

            In here it happens daily. And, it’s usually the guys who beat their chests the loudest and say they hate guys who talk. Case in point – two idiots in here (Heemer and Fat Dom) steal a case of laundry detergent from the loading dock. Why? Who knows. The dock area has a camera and when the case turned up missing, “let’s go to the video tape.” Both knuckleheads are locked up for theft. Here’s where the “rat” comes to play.

            Fat Dom is a scumbag. There’s no other way to say it. He tries to act like one of the five percenter philosopher kings, spouting off multi-syllable words, which he neither understands nor correctly pronounces, yet he is one of the most ignorant men I have ever met in my life. He sells out Heemer. Before you know it, Fat Dom is out of the hole – guilty plea on a theft charge and loss of a little good time (but hey, his “bid” ends in May!). Heemer? He’s being transferred. The irony is, Heemer is a follower. Dom is the truly corrupt one. But Dom regularly is in the officers’ ears so his behavior is overlooked.

            And that’s the problem with Rats. You never know when they’ll come after you. Piss one off and your name gets in front of the officers.

            What does it say about the system that they rely on guys telling on each other to maintain order? George Orwell, in his classic novel “1984” described power vesting in “Big Brother” who knew your every move, even your thoughts. And “Big Brother” made sure folks told on each other. Big Brother is alive and well in here and relying on dishonest, dirty inmates to tell on other inmates. It’s just another sign of how dirty this place is.

           

My Young Friend

There’s a young black man in here who goes home on December 31^st. He’s a good kid. That may be an overstatement. See, “good” in here – I realized some time ago – isn’t the same thing as “good” outside the fence. Good means he’s not conning anyone, or bullying or extorting anyone. Good means he avoids trouble, steers clear of the gangs, and the drugs, and the stupid racial animus that grips so much of day to day living in here. It’s not really a high bar that’s set, but somehow he manages.

And I like the kid. I really like him. He was a decent high school athlete – good enough that a couple of Division 1 football programs offered him scholarships. He turned them down, joined the army, and two years later – with his girlfriend pregnant – got busted with drugs and two stolen guns. He found himself out of the army and in prison. I’ve learned these past five years that his story is typical of so many other young black men in prison. Perhaps that’s what’s weighing on me as I see him get close to release. He’s coming back. I hate saying it, but it’s as true as the sun rising in the east. He’s coming back.

How do I know? You can see it in their faces, hear it in their voices. Show me a guy who wants to be liked by the numbskulls, who tells you he’s a “grown ass man” yet insists on following every other guy’s lead, and I can almost guarantee a return trip to corrections. Here’s the thing about so many of the young black guys I meet in here: They crave fitting in. every expression, every mannerism is a repeat of ten other guys. They all want to look the same, act the same, be the same.

I kind of understand it. Prison spends a great deal of time seeking uniformity. What you can wear, what you can buy, even what you can listen to and read is regulated. Grooming policies limit hair length. You act too much like an individual and you end up on the administration’s radar, and that’s usually not a good place to be.

So guys try and lay low.  It’s easier running hustles and ignoring the rules when you’re with a pack. But, you can’t find your way in a group. You can’t face your demons when they’re all around you. And, demons are what bring you back in here.

He’s a good kid, and he loves his little boy. I’ve seen them together in the visitation room.  His son, on his way to five, jumps in his lap when he arrives. The boy never leaves his dad’s side. “You’ll be home soon,” the little boy tells him. I watch them and remember how it was when both my boys were that age, how I’d wrestle with them, and chase them, and I’d let them climb all over me. I watch them and remind myself, the little boy is just a visitor, a visitor in prison.

“I’m going home to be a good dad and never coming back,” he tells me. He sounds sincere. Funny, that’s his name, “Sincere.” See, he runs with the five percenters and they name you after an “attribute.” That’s how guys run around here calling each other “Magnetic,” or “Dominance,” or “Viscous.” Problem is, calling yourself something doesn’t make it so. That’s just one in a series of problems with the philosophical underpinnings of the “5%ers.”

He says he’s going in a different direction, but what he says doesn’t match what he does. He has an overwhelming need to be accepted. “I’m the most popular guy on the east side,” he told me one day. I told him being popular in prison, with guys who see this bid as just a fieldstone on their path of criminal activity, isn’t what you want. See, to get along with the crowd in here requires you to ignore that little voice inside which keeps saying over and over, “I’m going the wrong way.” And, my young friend doesn’t get that.

Male children of incarcerated black adult males are four times as likely to be incarcerated as little black boys whose fathers haven’t been to prison. That is an ugly fact. But, it should tell young black fathers in here how important it is for them to break the cycle. No father wants his son to experience this.

So “Sincere” is sincere when he says “I’m gonna be a good dad. My son won’t go through this.” Yet, there he was last week, getting fresh ink done in his cut. What’s the risk – besides hepatitis or a dozen other diseases? He gets caught and he loses his 30 day adjustment days, plus six more. Thirty-six days. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but everybody in here, every day away from your little boy, is a day you can’t get back.

And then I tell him this. I “knew” the risks behind what I was doing, but I really didn’t. I thought I carefully calculated it all out: no jail time; no divorce; no estrangement from my sons. I rationalized it was all worth the risk; I’d save my marriage; my sons would have everything. I was wrong on all counts. I hadn’t calculated the damage it was doing to me; I completely misread the punishment, and my marriage, and my sons, and how I was solely responsible for the train wreck that became my family, my life.

He doesn’t see it. He’s “Big Man on the Compound.” Prison, I tell him, is no place to want to be successful or liked. Do your time, learn from it, and leave and be the best man you can be. I hope I’m wrong about my young friend. His failure will have repercussions.

 

Numbers Inside

So many of my blogs focus on numbers.  There are the number of inmates the United States incarcerates:  over 2 million; numbers relating to living in a low custody dorm (92 guys crammed into 10 square feet of living space each); and numbers about commissary (like Ramen noodles that sell for thirty cents apiece).  Everything, it seems, is about numbers.  It shouldn’t strike anyone as odd that one of the fastest growing security threats inside is built around numbers.  I’m talking about the five percenters.

I’ve written about these guys before.  They are a splinter group of Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  Even N.O.I. members will tell you “those guys are nuts!”  I have to be careful how I say this because my own faith history, the early Christian church, grew in spite of severe oppression.  Our founding fathers (and mothers) of faith were in and out of jail, beaten, tortured, murdered.  And somehow the message got out.  But, I am deeply suspicious of any pseudo-faith that sprung up in the last twenty years during America’s love-fest with incarceration.

Here’s the five percent philosophy in a nutshell:  only 5% of the population (coincidentally, all African-American males in or released from prison) are destined for survival.  They follow a system built on the power and mystery of numbers.  Numerology is the essence of their belief system.  They memorize and recite principles ad nauseam (“number eighty-six, in our natural state…”) and funny clichés (“true indeed, true indeed; indeed its so, indeed it’s so.”). 

Here’s the irony.  The guys actively involved are the worst math students ever.  They take names based on their chief “attribute” (there is a “Kinetic”, a “Magnetic”, a “Sincere”, and a “Dominance” to name a few) and spout off “history” that is – at its least damaging – false and many times racist, sexist and homophobic.  It would make a good neo-Nazi blush. 

But numbers; this is about numbers.  These guys don’t understand numbers.  They have no idea how to perform simple math calculations.  They can’t balance their inmate trust account statements.  Basic items like simple versus compound interest escapes them, yet they profess faith built on numbers.

Linguists will tell you numbers are just a form of language.  Accepting that as true, is it any wonder these guys don’t understand math given their total lack of basic skill with the English language?

The five percenter attraction is built simply on the premise that we, the incarcerated, are victims of an unjust, racist system that seeks to destroy African-American males.  There is much truth in the injustice of the American criminal justice system.  But, the answer is not in the organization of a fringe, race-centric sect that promotes violence and exclusion.

The five percenters have built a cult based on numeric and historic ignorance.  They must be challenged.  That requires – on a system level – a massive overhaul of the criminal justice system.  It also requires education.  Education is the key.  These guys feed off ignorance.  Unfortunately, prison is full of those who were left behind in school and know so very little.

So, day in and day out I find myself being engaged by five percenters to explain history, politics, economics and literature.  It’s a battle worth fighting.  Too many young black men are being lost.

Guggenheim

Guggenheim.  What does that mean?  I have no idea.  I know it’s the name of an art museum in New York.  I also know it’s a person’s name.  But what does it mean and if I call myself “Guggenheim” does is suddenly change who I am?

There is a very troubling effort underway, primarily in the mass of young, black inmates, to recruit these men into “the knowledge”.  As I’ve written in past blogs, both the five percenters and NOI (Nation of Islam) are growing sects in prison.  Coming on the heels of the Trayvon Martin shooting you can feel the palpable rise in racial tensions in this environment.  It’s driven by ignorance, self-loathing and envy. 

Shortly after the Trayvon Martin shooting, Fox News contributor and author Juan Williams – a black man – wrote an Op Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.  In it, he decried the race-baiters (Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson) who flocked to Sanford, Florida to decry the “racially-motivated” murder of the 17 year old Martin.  Black celebrities and athletes – even a U.S. Congressman – donned “hoodies” and denounced the “open-warfare on young, black males.”  Williams asked a simple question.  If 90% of the murders of young, black males are at the hands of other young, black males, where is the outrage in the black community?

I found Williams’ argument very moving and insightful.  But Williams was not alone.  USA Today Contributor Dewayne Wickham penned virtually the same column.  Bill Cosby announced the Martin shooting was about guns, not race.  As I customarily do, I engaged a few of the guys in here in that “observation”.  What, I asked, did they think of the Williams and Wickham and Cosby theory?

“Sankofa” answered for the group of perhaps fifteen guys.  “They’re all house negroes, sucking up to the white man”.  Who is “Sankofa”, the forty-year old man making this statement?  He’s a friend of mine, Jay, a rather bright forty year old from Baltimore in the middle of a second degree murder sentence.  Six months ago Jay legally changed his “white name” to Sankofa an African-dialect word meaning “freedom”.  He has become a leader of the post-African movement.  Everything about Africa is wonderful; everything Western is vile.  Ironically, the books, the “history”, the “knowledge”, trace its roots to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  It is built on revisionist history and completely devoid of fact or logic.  Simply put, I know more accurate African history and current events than any peddled by Farrakhan or the revisionists who peddle their distortions in prison.  Much like the white supremacists in here with their toxic views on Judaism and their holocaust denials, it is lie and misconception . . . and ignorance to the “nth” degree.

I recently read a book by Stanford University professor Richard Ford titled “Rights Gone Wrong”.  Ford, a black scholar, offered a detailed explanation of what he called, “The Balkanization” of the Black community.  He argued that much of the civil law created to stop discrimination and the criminal law created to end drug dealing and gun violence in the inner-cities was racially neutral and well-intended.  However, its application and abuse by parties on both ends of the political spectrum brought us to our current climate of racial toxicity.

The Black community, he argues, is not a monolith.  It is deeply split by those blacks who have reached educational and economic parity with the white middle and upper middle class versus uneducated, poor blacks.  Get an education, get a good paying job, and a middle class black family looks – and behaves – like a similarly situated white family.

As I’ve detailed numerous times in this blog, I struggle to understand what it means to be black in America.  For many of the young men whom I’ve met and befriended I realize their life experiences were so vastly different from the ones I tried to provide my own sons.  And there is no doubt that we are a nation with deep racial wounds and lingering prejudices.  The condition of poor black families in America is deplorable.  That a young black man has a better chance of being incarcerated than being a college graduate is disgusting and should shame every decent American, but the growth of “African” revisionist thought in prison is not the solution.

How dangerous is this ignorance?  Sankofa told me the other day that poor uneducated whites have it better in America than millionaire blacks.  I asked him if he knew who Charles Murray was.  Naturally, he said no.  I explained how Murray is a social scientist who has written throughout his career on the split in America along intellectual and cultural lines.  What Murray found, I argued, was that it’s the poor and ignorant vs. the wealthy and cultured.  It’s the haves versus the have-nots.

Ignorance.  Ignorance leads uneducated men in here to grasp at quick, easy to understand apologist theories for their incarceration.  Ignorance drives men to refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and to believe their criminal conduct is really a political reaction to a racist society.

Ignorance is a cancer.  It is destroying young black men in prison.  No program the government has prepared challenges this ignorance.  Only one thing can fight ignorance:  EDUCATION.

America is a divided nation.  The simple explanation is race.  But simple isn’t always right.  When a white person clutches their bag when seeing a young black man, or utters some asinine comment like “Obama hates white people” – they are as wrong – and as ignorant – as my young black friends in here.

America is a Balkanized country but it’s not Balkanized by race, but by lack of education.  Ignorance is rampant in prison.  Then again, it’s pretty prevalent in the “free world” as well. 

So I told Sankofa, and the Dominator, and Sincere and I God and Divine, to call me “Guggenheim”.   “Why?” they asked.  “Felt like I needed a new name to represent the new me”, I said.  “That’s stupid”, they told me.  Precisely my point. 

Conspiracies Everywhere

I was an unwilling participant to a conspiracy conversation the other day which got me thinking about failures in the nations corrections philosophy that are so prevalent today.  A couple of the young black college guys were debating the “real causes” of 9/11.  All three of these guys had read a revisionist “historians” (the guys not really a historian) take that the CIA and White House led the attack.  When I challenged their “research” they claimed I was too gullible.  “America’s the shit Larry.  Don’t you know that after what you’ve been through?”

Ignorance is alive and well in the inmate population.  Guys will buy any conspiracy theory – join bizarre prison created “religions” with off the wall theories.  I used to find it mildly entertaining.  But, like the rapid rise of another group of conspiracy believers – the Tea Party crew – I’m feeling a great deal of unease.  Prison spurs kooky views.  It’s up to the corrections professionals to address it.

When I was still held at the Henrico Jail I met an early twenties white kid who was an amazing artist.  He could draw anything – portraits, scenery, cars, you name it.  He was also covered in Nazi tattoos.  One morning around 5:00 as was my custom, I was drinking coffee, writing in my journal.  The kid sat down with me with a pained expression on his face.

“Mr. Larry, you’re a nice man.  I’m afraid the darks are gonna hurt you when you get to prison.  You need to join the Aryans.”

I thanked him for worrying about me but politely told him I didn’t need a white supremist group to keep me safe in prison.

Then I get to prison and I run up on Aryans, Hispanic gangs, a half dozen black gangs, Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and a host of other fringe groups who each espouse a philosophy built on a corrupt power elite beating down on them.

Ask the average inmate to consider the real cost (in dollars) to taxpayers to keep them locked up and they will tell you prisons make money.  Why do they believe that when the evidence overwhelmingly shows the financial drain corrections has become? “If you were right Larry it’d make no sense to keep us locked up without early release.  Only a fool would run a system like that?” (Are you listening Governor McDonnell?).

Black inmates are suspicious of white inmates.  Two groups:  NOI and Five Percenters (anti-white) are recruiting members in droves.  Why?  Because they offer simplistic explanations for the despair that permeates the lives of inmates.  It is easier to accept your station in life believing “white America is a racist country bent on destroying blacks through prisons and drugs” (and one need only look at the extraordinarily high percentage of blacks incarcerated to see why this gains traction) than to engage in an in-depth study of this country’s racial schizophrenia.

As I tutor guys in History, English, Philosophy and the Social Sciences I am constantly surprised how little these guys know.  They have very little knowledge of history and are unable to synthesize events as they develop across historical/sociological lines.  Every event can be boiled down to some knee-jerk neo-Marxian theory of power and suppression of people.

So, what I do is, when asked, I state the truth.  I let the facts speak.  Does it change some things?  Sometimes.  Guys hunger to know why.  Prison should be a place of honest reflection.  Instead, it is a jungle of lies, anger and ignorance.  And the system feeds those three.  Courts aren’t “blind” arbiters of justice; sentences are disparate, even when crimes are similar; race and money matter in too many convictions and sentences.  Prisons become dumping grounds with too few programs, too little educational opportunities and sadistic guards and inmates vying for supremacy.

Men lose hope and without hope there is nothing.  In one of the most moving scenes in “The Shawshank Redemption”, Andy, sorting records in the warden’s office, barricades himself inside and takes over the prison speakers.  He puts on an operatic aria and the prison suddenly stills as the men listen to two women sing in Italian.  He is caught and goes to the hole.

The next scene, he is in chow – thirty days later with his friends.  They sit and stare in amazement at Andy looking fresh after such a long period in the hole.  “How’d you do it?” they asked.

“I listened to Mozart the whole time.” 

“You had music back there?”

Andy pauses, “In my mind.  They can physically keep me here, but in my mind I’m free.  I still have hope.”

There’s a reason hope lives even in a place as dehumanizing as prison.  Hope is about truth, and beauty, and love.  Too many men in prison have given up on hope.  They look for simple explanations; they see nothing but time.  Until prisons become places of hope, conspiracy theories will thrive; anger, despair and hatred will have homes; and fringe groups will flourish.

Hopefully, it will change.