There are things that seem so physical, like smoke, you try to grab it, only to see it seep through your fingers. How you can be physically in a place and yet not be of the place is another curious twist of fate, especially when your ancestry goes back 400 years in that same place.
Every time I try to define what an American African is, the only definitions America seems to have created is what we are not. So we subtract those things to see what is left, and it is clear that this watered-down version of us does us and America a disservice.
We have a nation that is slowly cracking in the middle and in each of the cardinal directions. Landscapes change, farmland becomes desert, new islands appear and coastlines disappear beneath the waves. This nation needs all of its human physical and intellectual abilities to recreate our world. So we need the best and brightest — and not just the whitest — in positions of authority in the world I am talking about.
Instead, we have embarked on a course of action that is going to be as disastrous as slavery. Making deals with the private prison industry, closing schools and building more jails is a recipe for a capitalistic-style police state.
The economic disparities among racial groups have made certain kinds of crimes almost totally identified with certain racial groups. We have the white-collar crime of the white wealthy, for which people pay money so no one goes to jail. We have the blue-collar crime of the multi-racial, economically solvent, middle class, for which a slap on the wrist and short jail terms are the norm. Then we have the street criminals of the poor black and brown people, whom we throw the book at and fill up our prisons with while buying stock in private prisons.
We are willing to pay more to jail than we are to educate or house, and we create citizens who are totally nonfunctional in the world they are to rejoin one day and wonder why they end up back in jail.
Realizing dreams of success
Imagine a jail where the inmates are separated by skills and education after a thorough assessment of their capabilities. They are then given the education and put in areas where their skills can be enhanced. Make their 10 or 20 years of jail a time of productive work building American bridges, roads and a multitude of other things we need done.
They come out of jail with a work history that can be transferred into the real world, and you have turned a prisoner into a productive citizen.
We need a place where a success story can be written with a new, innovative approach to prisons and structural racism. Or we will stay in this place of fear and uncertainty, where our differences racially are more important than a shared American dream.
That shared American dream is the smoke that is so difficult to grasp because every time American Africans think it’s real, it slips right between our fingers and we are told it’s our fault. So rather than build America, we need to continue to rebuild our lives in America, and everyone loses.
We need a think tank in Martin Luther King Jr. County to deal with this and a multitude of other problems. Let’s bring the best and brightest together here and demonstrate why it’s in the best interests of America.
In 2019, we observe the 400-year anniversary of the start of slavery in America; we should not let that year pass before we turn smoke into something we can all grasp and share together as Americans.
Or maybe this whole thing is about the smoke and where it’s blown.
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American-community activist for more than 35 years. He is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org). To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.