REFLECTIONS OF AN INTEGRATION I KNEW

As I grow older, I can reflect on social and technological developments over a span of some 50 plus years. I remember no matter my income; I was restricted to my community. I remember big tube radios, the Lone Ranger, Inner Sanctum, and Jack Benny. I remember the first commercial jet airliner. I remember when color T.V. came to market. I remember the first transistor radio and Texas Instrument’s first hand held calculator. I remember Vietnam and the “Summer of Love.” I remember Malcolm, Kuame, Dr. King, and Ali. I also remember when the prisons were 20% Black and 80% White. I remember when drugs were an abomination in my community. I remember when guns were all but non-existent. Now I see a systematic and calculated reversal in the Black community. One so slick that it has the victims blaming the victims, the victims killing the victims, and the victims believing they are victims because they can’t do any better.

This almost complete reversal of social attitudes and conditions in the Black community has taken place right under my nose just like all the other “remembrances.” Except now these conditions were culminating into devastating results for Black people. For example, “According to Todd Clear, the negative labor market effects of mass incarceration on black communities are probably minor "compared to the economic relocation of resources" from Black to white communities that mass incarceration entails. As Clear explains in cool and candid terms, "Each prisoner represents an economic asset that has been removed from that community and placed elsewhere. As an economic being, the person would spend money at or near his or her area of residence-typically, an inner city. Imprisonment displaces that economic activity: Instead of buying snacks in a local deli, the prisoner makes those purchases in a prison commissary. The removal may represent a loss of economic value to the home community, but it is a boon to the prison community. Each prisoner represents as much as $25,000 in income for the community in which the prison is located, not to mention the value of constructing the prison facility in the first place. This can be a massive transfer of value: A young male worth a few thousand dollars of support to children and local purchases is transformed into a $25,000 financial asset to a rural prison community. The economy of the rural community is artificially amplified, the local city economy artificially deflated."

Looking back before I helped to integrate my high school, I wonder how we Blacks would have faired if we didn’t accept integration. From my perspective integration only forced competition among the ex-enslaved Blacks while whites knew full well there was only room for a very limited number of those ex-enslaved. Those few allowed in the house because their "attitudes" were politically correct, received the positons assigned to them. However, I wonder if left alone could we have built our own communities comparable to other ethnic groups in this country. I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t forgotten that we were then, as now, Black bodies for America’s economic and political aspirations. I wonder if it’s too late for our young men and women to realize, or even want to realize, that they should use their skills to help develop Africa. If so I'm convinced their reflections, although prehaps more technologically sophisticated, will never allow them to stand witness to what I’ve seen. Perhaps in Africa they can fulfill our deferred promise of America and build those communities without having to look over their shoulders for integration or incarceration schemes.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/Race_Prison_Poverty.html