September 17, 2000
Being in prison as far as morals and ideas go is sort of like being in a time warp that leaves you 50 years or more in the past. The reason for me bringing this subject up is an article I began reading in Newsweek, “Redefining Race in America.” While the world slowly but surely evolves in thinking, thought in prison seems to devolve, especially in the realm of race. What’s worse is I am incarcerated in a very soft state comparatively speaking. Take our neighbors in California, things couldn’t get worse there. I can only imagine the level of hate. The general attitude here on race and their regard for others is I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. I have difficulty going along with this attitude and there are many who share that same opinion. In reality the real staunch haters, the extreme racists are full of a lot of shit and are more scared and ignorant than anything. But many of them are looked up to and praised by even more frightened men than themselves looking to fit in. It is an ugly situation that I do not see changing anytime soon. Jim Crow still reigns here.
Don’t eat or drink after other races. Don’t sit at the same table as blacks if you’re white or Hispanic. The whites and Hispanics also band together against the blacks if there is a big problem. So, while white and brown race relations have gained some ground (at least in prison) it’s pre-civil rights movement times in concern of the blacks. But the inmates all have one common enemy and hate for cops.
For the most part, when an inmate looks at a cop they see no skin color. They see only the green, the color the cops wear. With a few exceptions, as goes with just about anything in life, a black guy in here holds even less regard for a black cop than a white inmate and vice versa. It’s one of those things that makes you go hmmmm. This is another part of that so called “criminal code”. It is part of the criminal lifestyle, -cops being the lowest form of life. But like anything else there are good cops and bad. I’ve run across some pretty sadistic fucks and some pretty decent human beings inmate, cop, white, black, blue, green. Try to make sense out of it all…
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