From Inside: The Value of Black Life in America, Part 1


December 13, 2020

By Shabazz M Muhammad (Eric L. Wilridge)

The Blackman “had no rights that a white man was bound to respect” – U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Dred Scott

Dred Scott is buried about a mile down the road from where Mike Brown was murdered.

The same mindset that allowed a police officer to summarily execute an innocent Black person in the streets is the same mindset that allows an officer to plant evidence and lie on the witness stand. It allows a judge to appoint a knowingly incompetent defense attorney, and it allows a prosecutor to withhold evidence, use false evidence, to overcharge and to discriminate with impunity. What is at stake is the most important civil rights issue for generations to come: the value of Black life in America and the massive incarceration of Blacks and other people of color.

A people can only expect to live well in a society according to the rubric of how they are valued by that society. While it is tragic to witness another Blackman in America shot by the police, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize the symmetry in the modern forms of lynching that have become acceptable: instead of hangin “niggers” they gun ‘em down — and leave their bodies on display for hours. While it is tragic to witness babies being torn from the arms of mothers who are carted off to prison because the state has not sanctioned their means of providing for their families, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize the analogous Willie Lynch separation of mother and child in order to break the family units and instill a divide and conquer stratagem, where generations to come will be content with being separate in their culture identification but equal in the brutalizing torture ordered by the society in general.

United against police and prison abuse, and imprisonment itself, the advocates of Florida Prisoner Solidarity came to the Florida State Prison (F.S.P.) December 6. 2020 and held a peaceful protest- to free all political slaves (inmates). While it is tragic to witness the effects on our children of the laws that are passed which makes it easier to prosecute Black teens as adults than to prosecute policemen for gunning down innocent Black men, women, and children, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize that value of their children–from a societal perspective–it is no different now than it was during the tragic death of Emmett Till.

While it is true that Blacks have endured a lot of tragic moments in America, especially those giving the gallows of the ghetto, it is even more true that Black people in America can look forward to even more of these tragic “Raisin in the Sun” moments, as these killings, stalkings, entrappings, incarceratings etc. are just effects of the problem and not the cause. Until we as a people, as a community, as a society get serious about dealings with the cause of these tragic moments — the value of Black life in America — we can look forward to more George Floyd “incidents.”

It is interesting how we have been organized and mobilized behind these tragic effects, yet few movements and organizations have had the audacity to organize and seek solutions to their cause. This is partly due to the fact that the people most aptly attuned to address the cause — unfortunately — Blacks in America have helped to perpetuate the cause against themselves. There is a narrative that has been smuggled — like slaves on a cargo ship — into the cultural subconscious of America that says, “Black people,” as evidence by how they live and interact with each other, don’t value their own lives (facts) so why should we? We are confronted with this narrative in America daily through the institutionalized tools and state sanctioned oppression deployed against us at will, police beatings, shootings, incarcerations.

As I sit here reading the November 2020 Bayview paper, it is interesting that despite to come a white President and Black Vice President, Black people still must put the emphatic symbol of their agitation on a t-shirt that reads “#BlackLivesMatter.” A protest navigating through the wildness of a question, a self-reflective question staring back from the mirror of reality, waiting for the gaze of a people who can’t look forward because they are too afraid of losing looking back. Minneapolis was not a new lesson or protracted politics revealing the reactionary mathematics of the government. Minneapolis was a prophetic reminder of the saying, “a people who refused to learn from their history are forced to repeat it.” In a cause and effect relationship, there’s even mathematics applied.

We need to orient our thinking and calculate our steps behind this premise; if the value of Black life in America is the cause, then the organized state sanctioned oppression inflicted upon Black lives every day in America is the effect. The police seizure of property and justifying their actions byw riting the theft into law is the same as the police seizure of an unarmed Black life — which they see as nothing but property — and justifying it just the same with their “justice system,” deeming it a just and able homicide.

In a country where district attorneys are trained to lead witnesses, overcharge the crimes they can’t prove, plant evidence, and win without regard for the law in service of protecting the law, how is it that the District Attorney could not seize an indictment from the Grand Jury even by the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter of an unarmed Black woman Breonna Taylor but paid her family 12 million (the most in American history) for no wrongdoing.

“I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education — the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” – Michelle Alexander

The three social cues that reveal the value of Black life in America to an unapologetic populace are mass incarceration of Blacks and other people of color — and the laws that target them — lack of access to quality education and senseless killings of Blacks in America. These three social cues, if perpetrated upon any other race in America, would solicit a national crisis, but because they are perpetrated upon Blacks, there’s barely a whisper.

The sad part is the reality that even amongst Blacks, there’s barely a whisper — as if our voices and struggles have become confined within the margins of other people’s expectations and valuations of us. How are we as a people not mobilized and organized through indignation to at least become conscious enough to see our origins, i.e. our families, communities, churches, mosques, and every cultural medium through which we act as political instruments exercised to gain us power by the only means practical, the value of Black life in America.

“Mass incarceration is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement.” – Michelle Alexander

Through mass incarceration they have taken back all of the rights gained for Black men and women through the Civil Rights Movement. With all the motives and policies that disenfranchise felons from nto only their own communities, but society at large, it is more than interesting to note that the same exclusionary tactics that boxed Blacks out of society in the Jim Crow era and Reconstruction era seek the same end now, legalized in the prison industrial complex era: discrimination in hiring, housing, education and voting are now accepted again as long as Blacks (“felons”) are biting the bullet.

By convincing him that he has no value, the prison industrial complex targets the Black man’s ideals and social cues, forcing him to register such a low estimation of himself that he takes as his portion the state sanctioned oppression which the law in its humanity accords to him. 

“In a landmark decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, Ruffin v. Commonwealth, issued at the height of Southern Redemption, the Court puts to rest any notion that convicts were legally distinguishable from slaves. For a time, during his service in the penitentiary, he is in a state of penal servitude to the state. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for a time being a slave of the state.” – “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander

After speaking in New Orleans, Michelle Alexander speaks with Piccard University student Lequan Woods as she signs a copy of her book for him, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”: Naomi Martin, Times-Picayune 

For those of you that support the prison industrial complex’s institutionalization of massive incarceration of Black men and other people of color, you are aiding and abetting the legislative plantation owner’s continuation of the system of slavery through the penal system — the first system sought to control the newly freed slaves by placing them back into the conditions of chattels with the commonly utilized legislative pen as the bullwhip — a condition that became meticulationslt sewn into the fabric of America to such a degree that the unapologetic populace, even amongst people of color, have sat back and marveled at the parallel “prima facies” systems of slavery built into the prison industrial complex — working long hours for little or no pay. And Blacks and other people of color not only work for these plantations, but they seek employment in these plantations with such destitute and deplorable conditions that a lot of them are lulled back into the system of slavery not only by the physical and logistical parallels of slavery, but also byt he parallel expectations that slaves of of themselves based on the low estimation plantation owners had of them.

?Black men in the U.S. fortunate enough to live past 18 are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phrase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many Black men to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison: it required only a minor psychic adjustment.” – George Jackson

Best-selling author George Jackson always maintained his dignity, smiling even in chains.

Their laws, their policies, their capital, their modus operandi has targeted our men, women, and children and communities for too long. We have been auctioned off and placed in the stocks in America for too long. The value of Black life in America is the pressuring issue. How many slaves will have to be freed at the point of this exhaustive pen before we realize that in all of these “incidents” they are targeting our existence with impunity.

We have allowed them to become so comfortable with targeting and policing our communities that Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley had the audacity to introduce a plan under “The Justice Reinvestment Initiative” to build satellite prisons in poor Black communities and call it “Community Corrections,” prompting the ACLU Sentencing Project to report, “The Justice Reinvestment Initiative, as it has come to operate, runs the danger of institutionalizing mass incarceration at current levels.”

Unfortunately we have already reached that point in America where the mass incarceration of Black men and other people of color has become institutionalized not only in the fabric of America, but in the collective subconscious of the American populace. Although it is a fact, statistically, that 70 percent of the crime in America is committed by whites, Blacks and other people of color, make up over 70 percent of the prison population.

They are targeting our existence with impunity. As expressed by one Alabama planter, “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes. This is a blessing, for they must be controlled in some ways or white people cannot live among them.”

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, it is estimated that three out of four young Black men (and nearly all of those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” — “The New Jim Crow”

Enslaved Africans work the cotton fields

As Blacks and other people of color in America, we are facing the eruption of a moment of truth so connected to our future existence in this country, that if we fail to stare down the effects of our reality and face the cause (the value of Black life in America), then we will be deservedly remembered as the race which polluted the air of humanity by supporting the institutionalization of mass incarceration.

Harriet Tubman, who freed hundreds of slaves, always regretted the fact that she could have freed thousands more if only they knew they was slaves. The “new” underground railroad and the Free Florida Movement Florida Prisoner Solidarity (Formerly Gainesville Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee)

433 S. Main Street, Gainesville FL 32601. Sign up to join!

Refuse to march forward with the same regret. We understand that for those of us affected and targeted by mass incarceration, it’s our turn to act. We have to leave the crops in the field.

“When the innocent, mentally ill and the guilty are enslaved under the same oppression simply because the system deems you expendable (the value of Black life in America) then I recommend that you’d better resist too, or else you will suffer the most ignoble fate known to humanity: dying as a slave of the old age. It is far better to die fighting for liberation, freedom, and honor than it is to live of service and docility, constantly enduring abuse by your master.”

I would ask the reader to please keep an open mind to your own measure of courage and ability to abolish this institution of mass incarceration of Black men and other people of color. The most difficult part of any revolution is convincing people to boot up and take that first step, but this is also the most enduring.

The prison industrial complex is using your labor, your votes, your taxes, your silent consent to promote and perpetuate the system; therefore, if you cut off your labor, re-align your votes, and demand that your taxes be used to free rather than enslave people, you will shut down the system’s vital organs. Everyone affected by the institutionalization of mass incarceration, whether by profit or liability, has a pivotal role to play in the abolition of this enslavement.

The first step for many of you reading this will be to re-evaluate your perspective on crime and punishment and your superstitious beliefs in the justice system, determining what psychic adjustments or hallucinations you have made to accept a system more devastating than apartheid. Hitler bought insurance policies on biological property — the soldiers. When that money was gone, he insured prisoners, and he put a lot of people into prison. The United States of America is copying Hitler, putting people in prison and bonding them.

The U.S. has amassed huge amounts of money based on mass incarceration and warehousing of slaves. In the beginning of 2014 Florida added hundreds of new “laws” to its books — on top of thousands of laws already existing. Why is America in such a race to enslave, entrap, and incarcerate?

“Before democracy, chattel slavery existed in America.” – Michelle Alexander

Through the prison industrial complex and institutionalization of mass incarceration, the corrections corporation of America and other mass-corporations have found a way to profit off their favorite pastime – chattel slavery.

Current history awakens from its slumber to recite to Allah (God) the accounts of man. Will America’s blurb read, “A society so indebted to the whores of commerce that they sought to enslave men rather than free them.”

Strange Fruit
The cherry blossoms
With a bullet in its pit
Because its roots have been watered
By the muffled screams of slaves hanging
From its branches…
A child plants a prayer
In the garden of his mother’s mind
Next to his father’s broken dreams;
She raises him on bitter milk and cold cereal;
A meal she deems fitting to prepare him for the world

I wonder sometimes if George Floyd and Trayvon Martin are in heaven writing an epistle to the people on the same bullet?

I imagine it would read:

“To the Black and minority people of revolutionary merit, our communities have become the death blossoms that power structure in America uses as rationalizations to parade its paramilitary and institutionalized mass incarceration agendas to wipe out a colorless class… Colorless in regards to any political hue that would give us the power to paint our visions with the vibrant expressions of self-determination to act – in our communities and in the world as productive contributors to the will of humanity. Remember, our lives were taken with the consent of the state sanctioned jurisprudence under the watch of a Black president. We wanted our lives to be more than a few sad songs and photographs pasted onto the collective subconscious of the American people. We see the true people of merit organizing, protesting, marching… We’ve tuned in so much of the rhymes of the people’s heart for change that we threw a concert in heaven so that we could watch the angels dance. Some of them hadn’t cut up in a while. We are tired of dancing. But we’re noticing that the music is getting louder. Please, don’t let them stop the music; now it seems we can’t rest without it.
Sincerely, George and Trayvon”

The cherry blossoms fall from their stems willingly in order to be free of the noose. Falling with the determined strength to live free. They plunge into the soil similar to slaves overboard cargo ships plunging into the ocean with the purest memory of freedom in their hearts… Black and minority people have been pitted against so many antagonisms and contradictions that it is hard for us to recognize the value of our seed.

Maybe it is more important for us to remember the source from which our water is gathered: inner strengths like love, faith, and determination… Yes! We are proudly recognizing that we are strange fruit in America — strange because once we blossom into the people we are meant to be, only Allah (God) will recognize our names…

Write to Eric:
Eric L. Wilridge #107390
Florida State Prison
P.O. Box 800
Raiford, FL 32083

Read another piece written by Eric:
https://sfbayview.com/2018/01/in-florida-prisons-will-so-called-street-thugs-find-the-courage-to-confront-corporate-thugs/