Razor wire plantations: America’s addiction to slavery and sadistic cruelty

Razor Wire Plantations:America’s Addiction To Slavery and Sadistic Cruelty by Asar Imhotep Amen(s/n Troy Thomas An Enslaved Individual The United States is predicated upon permanent disparities and inequities in life expectancy , mortality rates , education gaps, incarceratioin, economic slovency , and counter-development burdened upon Africans domestically and internationally. Founded in enslavement,these disparities were facilitated by military conquest,and perpetuated through economic, legal, and social stratification with Africans occupying the lowest echelons of the American caste system. Africans have forcefully sewrved as the cash crop of the United States and the so-called “New World”, a permanent source of free and cheap labor in the plantation and prison system;a varying source of free and enslaved soldiers for all major wars fought in North America and the European internecine wars ; and an endless source of flesh for medical experimentation in prison, plantation, and military sites. Entire industries were created to dehumanize and master the control; of the African population in the United States for profit and superiority. Put simply, the suppression of African culture and life provides the lifeblood of the United States and their allies . This suppression, violent and repressive, permeates the space which African exist and is experienced as power disparities. in recent decades, United States jail and prison populations have grown exponentially. In 2022, the U.S. is still the world’s largest incarcerator. Despite comprising only five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. holds a quarter (2.4 million) of the U.S. population, African so-called “Americans” constitute over 60% of the prison population. Women of color make up two thirds of incarcerated women. Yet, in the 1990s, during an era of presumably economical and technological advancement, the U.S. experienced its fastest growing incarceration rate since chattel enslavement. Sparked by former Democratic (The so-called “First Black President”) president Bill Clinton, whose 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act gave $ 9.9 billion for prison construction, the rates of imprisonment have increased dramatically sinced the 1970s. People of African ancestry experience incarceration at rates far greater than any other group in the world. In 2004, an estimated 12.6% of all Black males in their late 20’s were in jails or prisons, incomparison to Latinos (3.6%) and Caucasians (1.7%). The current crisis of African imprisonment in the U.S. has caused some authors to call the prison industrial complex “The New Jim Crow”. Prisons played a vital and necessary function in colonial world. In fact, the early European imperialist powers sentenced criminals to slavery in distanced colonies as a means of manpower and labor resource. These nations were common for exploiting their criminal population in the acquisition of land, resources and power. Later, once the land was conquered/stolen, whites employed a system called transportation. Thus, “transportation” provided the option of being deported to a colony for the mistreatment of free labor and services or receiving a severe criminal penalty (usually death). Another known system was workhouse incarceration,which served two main purposes: (a) providing free labor to developing capitalist nations and (b) rehabilitating recalcitrant workers back into the capitalist workforce. These systems introduced and provided the foundations for the United States prison industrial complex. Again, under capitalist economic arrangement, the prison industrial complex provided several economically necessary conditions: physical control of the surplus African population, the potential for the production of goods without labor costs,and rehabilitation and resocialization of the marginalized African workers through the use of hard work as part of the penal response. The continual incarceration of Africans, in the interest and service of whites, has it’s Orgins steeped within the fabric of American history. Since the time of enslavement, Africans were seized and exploited for white profit. Even thereafter, despite the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment,which supposedly ended slavery, Africans were sanctioned to “involuntary servitude” as punishment for “crimes”. To illustrate, Section 1 of the 13 Amendment of the United States’ Constitution states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. According to data from Tennessee’s Main Prison in Nashville, immediately following the Civil War, the incarceration rate for Africans increased significantly, whereas the rate for whites decreased. This trend has persisted throughout the decades, which partially explains the “prison industrial complex” today. To date,prisons represent a 147 billion dollar per year industry. With the current privatization of prisons, major corporations,such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), are recording astronomical profits through the exploitation of African incarceration and subsequent slave labor. In addition to the prison owners, services and products as food,clothing, construction companies,medical, transportation, security,and many other white profiteers have and continue to benefit from the incarceration of people of African descent. America has not abolished slavery;it has simply transferred it into the prisons. Prisons are now the epicenter around which many towns have sprung up, reviving the dying rural communities (e.g., Susanville, Sacramento,Stockton,Lancaster,Marin,Pelican Bay,etc.). The local populations compete for these jobs, which are unique in their high wages and pension plans, while requiring minimal thinking ability. 2 No one can deny the stark increase in incarceration of Black and Brown folks within he past three- plus decades. This increase is largely due to policies and harsh laws which are racially motivated (e.g., the “Three Strikes Laws”). One notorious example is the federal guideline that sentences people to 10 years for possession of 5 grams of crack or 500 grams of cocaine, when whites are much more likely to be caught with cocaine. No study has ever proven that crack-cocaine in it’s coagulated form-is more harmful than it’s powder form. And though this law was modified recently, it’s purpose has already been served. Since “the end” of slavery’s role as a profitable enterprise the U.S. farming industry, the principal question for law officials has been, “what is to be done about the fasst growing population of restless young Black and Brown men and women? Prison has become the genocidal solution to this never ending “problem”. A population that is no longer a significant source of slave labor to be exploited,nor allowed to be junior partners to the imperialists, has no role to play in the Corporate Oligarchic Police State. Hence,we have seen the growing slave class behind U.S. prison walls/plantations. Black and Brown men & women (and children-school to prison pipeline) born in America and blessed enough to live past the age of eighteen are psychologically conditioned to accept the inevitability of being sent to a so-called “correctional” facility (modern day slave plantation). For the vast majority of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of profound humiliations. In other words, the real roots of crime in America are associated with a constellation of suffering so hideous that, as a society, it cannot bear to look it in the face, So it hands it’s casualties over to a system that will keep us from it’s sight. Indeed, a people already invisible can be easily made to disappear as this is the primary function of ghettos, barrios,reservations and prisons in America. In sum,the prison industrial complex is a very deliberate and calculated product of the white power structure in the United $tates. It reifies the colonial relationship and power disparity between Africans,Latinos ,along with other marginalized populations in America. Particularly oppressive for African in America,the expansion of prison has resulted in the neo-commoditization of Black bodies in a Capitalist system with roots in the original commoditization of the African body, labor. Thus, Black incarceration serves a deliberate and specific purpose in sustaining white terror, power, and domination.In othert words, the relationship between Africans in America and the holders of state power in the United States is similar to that which exist between the colonized and the colonial master. Focusing on the spatially separate African “American” communities of the urban North and the heavy concentrations of Africans in the Southern Black Belt, the colonial model views Americanized Africansas a unit a part,an internal colony, which is systematically exploited by white society.Blacks are viewed as a separate nation that exports cheap labor and imports finished goods from the broader community. In the final analysis,African so-called “American” slaves must accept the reality that, for the white American “race” , “Democracy” and racial oppression /slavery are not conflicting ideals. The fact that Black people have been and remain enslaved for over three hundred-plus years by a “Democratic” (largely “Christian” form of government) should be evidence enough. Furthermore,a Democratic government presupposes an inherent equality of races;it does not provide methods of liberation for those who are not equal. Slavery in America is very lucrative which is why white America has made it very clear that it has no intention of ever giving it up. For example,the California Department of Finance recently said (July 2022 San Francisco Bay View) that it’s too expensive to end slavery in California because it would cost $1.5 billion if they had to pay incarcerated people minimum wage to do the work that California prisoners/slaves are presently having to do for free. However,the Department of Finance has not shared with the public that California slaves have generated $2 billion annually in goods and services.In addition,California slaves are also contracted out to private businesses which make another $9 billion in services! Again, it would only cost $1.5 billion to pay enslaved people in California. This essay more than explains why California,along with America in general refuses to abolish slavery. California also has Life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) to strengthen its slavery system by keeping Black and Brown folks inside of these planatations so that we may be worked to death! Hey California,this is what “Democracy” looks like!!! We California slaves have come to fully understand our position in this state and we know quite well that one of the most tragic beliefs widely shared by Blacks in America is that white Americans ase whole want to help Black people prosper and have equal access to society’s resources. Faith continues to prevail in spite of overwhelming evidence which disputes this belief. Black people continue to ignore the irrefutable truth that, in a racist social system, all institutions will reflect, protect, and sustain values that are consistent with racism/white supremacy. Slavery is the system that America has chosen.To argue otherwise makes no historical sense. This is what “Democracy” looks like. If you as a citizen do not like what you see then by all means feel free to change it.Visit www.endslaveryincalifornia.org Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika Movement to amendthe13th.org FEEDBACK MOST WELCOME: Troy Thomas,[ID number] (aka Asar Imhotep Amen) C.H.C.F. P.O. BOX 213040 Stockton,CA 95213