In the meantime......
(Courtesy of **************)
New Underground Railroad Needed as Black Men Flee the Pursuit of the U.S. Justice System
Date: 02/19/2007
Hunted like runaway slaves, the Black male needs more support than ever from community leaders and leading Black gatekeepers instead of criticism and condemnation. As of December 2005, over 2 million prisoners occupy the U.S. Prison system, the largest incarceration rate in the civilized world, and at least 65% of those are Black males.
According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, 3,145 Black males are sentenced per 100,000 Black men in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males. These numbers are astonishing as well as questioning.
At first conclusion, one would tend to believe that Black male imprisonment is more needed than any other race of males in the U.S., implying Black males are criminal at heart and destine for a life of incarceration. No man is born a criminal and not one is destine for incarceration, except in the unproductive practices of the U.S. justice system.
No more an institute for rehabilitation, the U.S. prison system has repositioned itself as a system of collecting and housing bodies as possessions of the state to be further used by bidding corporate entities for production of cheap product goods and services, in addition to providing rural families with employment.
Black men have become a commodity in this systematic market and little effort to change this system has been attempted by anyone; politicians, activist groups, churches, and especially Black leaders. Instead, Black men have to carefully watch their steps to avoid fitting the national profile for potential incarceration.
During slavery, when Blacks sought to escape the pursuit of the slave masters and catchers, our brave sister, Harriet Tubman, accompanied by others, devised an escape route called the Underground Railroad to assist runaways in their search for freedom. Today, a new Underground Railroad has to be put into place to help Black males avoid being ensnared in the trap set for them by the U.S. justice system.
Anger and despair engulfs many Back males today because of lack of supervision, family structure, guidance, and support from those who should support them most, such as fathers, teachers, neighbors and of course the Back woman. Yes, there is much temptation in the “hoods” but Railroad stations must be put into place by concerned Black community groups, preferably the churches that will divert and transform all the negative energy in Black males into positive energy.
No help or solutions will come from the political system or the justice system because it is those systems that hunt our Black men, so any effort to get attention from those systems would be a waste of time. Innovation in the form creative action from schools, families, and volunteer community groups would do more because it is these institutions that have a better understanding of the Black male than anyone.
Sadly, society and even the Black community itself have become complacent with what is happening to the Black male population and have seemingly given up, believing that Black men are of no use and hopeless. This is untrue, the problem is there are no institutions in this society that have acknowledge the problem and decided to take action to reverse the trend.
When an issue is treated as untreatable, then the issue will of course only get worse, but negative imagery of Black males in the U.S. society has gained a strength that only seems unbreakable, yet is not. Divine intervention is needed to break the yoke of persecution against Black men.
Black leaders must stop depending on politicians and political policies to end the struggle for Black equality and begin taking to the streets erecting Railroad stations that address the problems as needed, with love, power, and a will to defeat this modern day institution of U.S. re-enslavement of Black males.
CR Hamilton
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
ROARIN.......