The Prison System and Slavery

While the prison institution is necessary for any form of civilized society, it has become warped for the containment and exploitation of blacks, specifically men.  With the implementation of the civil rights acts that legally brought about the end of segregation and Jim crow laws white men needed a new way of discriminating and maintaining control over black bodies and a black work force.  In comes the implementation of the prison system which takes criminal bodies and produces free labor.  Now all that is left is figuring out a way to incarcerate huge amounts of young black bodies so that the prison institution might be a second slavery.

At the Early 1970's crack was created, a cheaper, easier, and more addictive drug than ever before.  This drug would be pumped into urban and specifically black communities, creating an all out epidemic through the 1980's-90's.  It is here that president Reagan expanded and radicalized the war on drugs.  Raise of incarcerations and sentences sky rocketed filling private for profit prisons with more bodies than ever before. While we may never no how big a role the U.S government played in introducing crack into black communities It is a well documented fact that the CIA helped establish the drug trade through South America, to provide funds for U.S sponsored rebels.  However, even if we are to subscribe to a innocent narrative the War on Drugs policies specifically targeted black and impoverished communities.  Laws on crack a significantly cheaper and available drug were dramatically tougher than the more expensive cocaine, predominantly used by whites.  In fact the incarceration times of crack to cocaine are 100:1 meaning that jail time served selling 1 gram of crack is equivalent to selling 100 grams of cocaine.  This vast disparity in laws allowed for the targeted imprisonment of poor black communities.  

From these mass incarcerations a free able bodied work force is once again provided to fuel America and its economy.  On top of that it produces a new form or discrimination and racism.  By giving blacks longer and more frequent prison incarcerations it creates a stigma of black bodies being by nature more violent and prone to a criminal nature.  Yet another way to discriminate and keep the black people down.  This stigma has been built on and developed till today where news media, citizens, and police view poor blacks as dangerous and criminals.  

I will always believe that a prison institution is necessary to maintain order in a civilized society, however America's prison system has become a private institution that harnesses free black labor established by laws and rules targeted at incarcerating large black populations.  The laws in turn create stigmas that perpetuate black fear and terror, which only heightens racial tension and furthers the process of the prison system.  If we are to help break black racism, it will be inparitive to fix the prison system in America.