Both of my parents have been to prison. They both served some form of time in the prison industrial complex while I was in college. At least 3-4 of my first cousins have gone to prison. One young cousin went to prison the day I graduated from college in 1998. At least 3 of my six siblings have spent some time meandering through the prison industrial complex. And just a few days ago, I was made aware that my youngest brother, the baby of our family, is sitting in a jail cell facing a number of charges.
I, of course, have never been to prison. I am a college administrator and professor who has the luxury of tying bow ties around my neck, putting on fancy socks, and going into my class or office to teach the latest theory around contemporary Black politics and life. I get to inspire a generation of students, supporting both the lucky and the privileged in their pursuit of academic excellence. I get to teach Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. I get to expose students and peers alike to the Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th: I am not severely mapped into the realities of prison life. You see, I got out...I escaped the trap! At least that's what I think. Because if I really begin to think about the comprehensive scope of the prison industrial complex, I must admit that I am extremely marred by its influence on my life through its direct effect on my family.
In 1997, I will never forget sitting in Duchess Harris' class about Black Public Intellectuals, when I was at Macalester and discussing the one thing that all Black people have in common no matter how much they (we) hate to admit it. She said, "the one thing all Black people have in common is that we all have a relative who is either in jail or who has been to jail." I'll never forget her saying that in a sea of mostly white faces as they pondered Black realities. The profundity of that statement was so palatable that I sat speechless as I reflected on how my own mother had entered the prison industrial complex in 1995, just as I was starting college. And, during Christmas that freshmen year, my grandmother had forced me to go up to the jail to see her while I was home on Christmas break.
So you can imagine that I was deeply overwhelmed as I sat in my faculty housing unit watching 13th on Netflix, as my middle brother texted me the news about my youngest brother being confined to a jail cell somewhere in South Carolina. You see, my middle brother found out right around my birthday, but had sought to wait until after I had celebrated my 40 years of living. As I sat on the couch reconciling text messages and documentary style visual images, I began to be overwhelmed with emotion vacillating between sadness, anger and helplessness. And as I thought about all the shit stacked against my young brother's life, I began to cry. And if I'm keeping it 100, I cried for a complete hour...a complete hour.
I think it was the knowing of the obstacles that really got to me. I and my siblings' lives read like every vulnerable child's horror story: young dead mother, sickly father, shitty school systems, poverty, limited options, in and out of foster care homes, abuse, homelessness, easy low-level drug access, and the need to be hard in a world that makes your prove yourself. It's almost cliche its so sad. Its like Precious meets Color Purple meets Lifetime sad. And if we really going to be real honest, its not like we couldn't see it coming. But who am I to tell a father how to raise his son? Who am I to hop in my Subaru to run down to South Carolina, and pack up bags, and say you are coming with me, all the while knowing I'm barely getting by on my salary? We had tried it before with two other siblings and it had failed miserably. So, like a lot of Black people who are striving to be Black excellence personified, I put on my blinders, and tried to just take care of my family...and pray for the best.
Sadly, I am not always so sure that Jesus answers these complex prayers. I've never seen the end of generational poverty even as I've been faithful to a Black church that has an anti-convict culture, yet sees Paul "jailbird ass" as seminal to theological formation. And, the inability to make sense of the prison industrial complex at church, makes it even harder to discuss it at Sunday dinner tables. For the most part, the lucky ones, like me, just run around saying what one of my mentees calls "anything:" "if he had just made better choices," "it really isn't that bad," "you just got to let it go," "you live hard, you die hard." I know I'm not the only one whose heard this kind of respectable, its all your fault rationale. But the reality is, my brother isn't in jail just because he made bad decisions. This world is designed for him, and me too, to be commodities of a prison industrial complex.
Coming to that realization breaks my heart. The prison system disrupts family. It does not rehabilitate. It breaks people. It creates a disenfranchised criminal class, even if you are innocent. It fosters mental illness. It turns children into "super predators." It builds intolerable space between those on the inside and those on the outside. No one is better because of our prison system, instead it fucks us all.
Right now, I am thinking about the little boy who used to visit me during summers in Atlanta. I am thinking about how even then you could see that he was brilliant kid, learning Spanish and French at four. I am thinking about how his mother died when he was 7, and how he was bounced around from home to home. I am thinking about him being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and how every once and a while he would Facebook message me asking to come live with me...and then change his mind. I am thinking about how he was enrolled in a community college, after getting out of some form of juvenile detention center. And, I am thinking about myself...and had I only been independently wealthy or a doctor or a lawyer, I could fix all of this.
I am considering the dissonance between my mentorship of young men in Alpha who will never see the inside of a prison hopefully (but hell, who knows), and my helplessness regarding my own brother.
If I'm honest, I am resentful and hurt and broken because I really don't know what I should do. So I pray, with the kind of skepticism that says this may be my last time praying. And right now, the most cathartic thing I have done in the last few days to work through what I'm feeling is to write this post...and to contemplate Prison as a trope of death in light of all the aspirations I've ever had. And, like my middle brother said, "I close my eyes, kiss my son, and pray to God that he will never see the inside of a prison."
Selah.
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