Tread lightly..tiptoe…be careful…PC…Who cares if I offend anyone! “I’m color blind” I hear a lot, ha! Culturally this country is so tone deaf because for the longest time people weren’t made to care! Now we have all these incidents and social missteps because people aren’t used to thinking beyond themselves! Let’s talk prison for a sec. Prison is a system of hope dealing and hope killing while saying, get better or else, in the process. I have a cousin in here that me and our friend began to argue with because he was denied a chance to have his parole hearing moved up, yet people in his same program was granted that opportunity. I told him to write them again, and basically he said that he’s good, he’s not going to set himself up for that. That he knows himself and he’s not going to set himself up to get letdown again because he will take steps back in his mentality. So instead of getting ready to go home, to his lady and his kids, he’s staying in here for several more months longer than he should. I told him he doesn’t care about his freedom, and we argued, he couldn’t see our point, but then I noticed how tied in his emotions were to this rejection, that he was saying in every way but direct, that he isn’t strong enough to take more rejection, and he’s been through a lot. Now, there was no good reason given to why they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain once his programming is finished, except a check list of what not to do until they see him. This system kills hope. What is a human being without hope, that only knows rejection while being told to be docile and compliant. It’s not realized how this unexplained set backs and refusals to advance people is a hindrance to people and their family emotionally, and having hopes let down is so draining and it has the ability to make a person revert back to a sense of not caring, and then what…? People act as if there has always been help for incarcerated people. Most of these people have never been further than the prison they reside in. I don’t care how many white people you believe there is in prison, it’s NOT the same. When black people are arrested and booked, it’s an energy that almost says, I got you, you’re exactly where you belong. Also how we are treated comparatively, is like, “you’ll come back”. I don’t know why you care, as if we have nothing to come back to and no one that loves us. Even the outside treatment facilities were too far away from urban communities that black people would violate parole by not being able to make it to their treatment recommendations and parole meetings, and so it continued the steady influx and flow of us back into prison. And then these programs became largely in-patient to supposedly fix that problem, but underlying truth again was that it kept a certain segment of the population inside of prison LONGER, like my cousin…like ME. No one would build a church outside of the community that it’s supposed to cater to, how can it be affected and how would it have a congregation, it’d be a waste of money. For so long, outside organizations and programs weren’t plenty because no one wanted those organizations within urban communities, and if they were, they were largely black and lowly funded and barely recognized. So why build more, when the people that you are supposedly trying to help can’t make it to you. SO now all these organizations and such are helping with transportation, and it looks like this has been a thing always there, just not used. No, the states use their resources to continue building more prisons to address a problem, instead of building treatment to heal the disconnect and systemic problem. Even the crimes that are punished the worst are largely committed by black people. For the life of me, I don’t know how you tell a victim of sexual assault and molestation, that it isn’t a violent crime. So in my state, Nebraska, these crimes are largely helped with new legislation and ways to move in and out of the system quicker, while sentenced at a lower rate versus other I guess real violent crimes like assault, gun possession, robbery, domestic etc. We just had a senator on the floor that refused to vote for a bill involving the snap program because she says that she thinks drug dealers are worse than rapists! A woman said this! There are so many underlying tones that people don’t bother looking at for what they truly are, most black men aren’t convicted sex offenders or rapists, but they are for a large part, convicted drug dealers and violent offenders. SO simply, less help for the black community when it comes to government funding and assistance, so now, with no home or no food…and barely knowing of anything outside of the poverty you lay in day in and day out, and you have to survive, after all self preservation is a human trait, what would you do?! This system will take their foot off a black man’s neck for a moment only to shift and place it on his back. And who cares right? I mean who really gives a damn, it’s not you, we did it to ourselves right? We have the same advantages and opportunities as you do. Forget the fact that all these clinical churches I’ll call them, are built outside of the communities they need to serve, so one side of the population is getting their needs met and the resources offered, while another side can’t find a ride, let alone know their way around those parts of town. Yea, I get it, staying in prison sometimes just feels so much easier, even when you are dying inside and want to get out with everything in you, but after so much shit you’ve climbed through uphill, you just can’t take the slippery and shitty step of possible rejection, because who knows the person you may become once you fall all over again with more than you can handle and everyone can smell it, you can’t hide it…so you start feeling just how the world feels when they here of people like you…so the fuck what, I don’t have life, I’ll get out eventually. Being color blind is impossible, lie to yourself
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