Sometimes, indeed, the emperor wears no clothes. To wit, we are told by the groundbreaking author, Michelle Alexander, that “…there are more Black adults incarcerated and under correctional supervision than were enslaved in 1850,” and further that “By November 2012, the US held a higher percentage of its black population under lock and key than south Africa did during apartheid.” These facts cannot and should not be ignored, and while it can be said, that for some blacks, this nation does indeed seemingly provide for opportunity and fairness; this quite obviously is not true for the whole of this nation, in which this country summarily fails to live up to its guiding principles of egalitarianism, hope, and justice.
No nation, can truly live and be successful, half free and half oppressed, for that which is wrong, cannot possibly outlive that which is right. Further to the point, all children are born innocent, and therefore what they ultimately end up becoming has a great deal to do with the environment and opportunity that surrounds them as they grow up. Therefore, those communities which are bereft of hope, harassed, disadvantaged, despised, dilapidated, with wretched infrastructure, and poor educational facilities are going to have a strong tendency to produce people that are not going to be beneficiaries of the positive attributes that America has to offer, for that sort of offer to them, is for the most part, null and void.
The deliberate segregation of those of color, and especially those of color that are impoverished, is a disgrace to what this country is supposed to stand for. Those so born into those ghettos of despair, are disadvantaged from day one, and all those that live there suffer through the indignity of knowing that they, for the most part, do not matter to mainstream America, for if they did matter, this country would be far more proactive in addressing the poverty and hopelessness that these poor segregated communities are filled with.
America’s sick answer to those that are the most hurting, that are the most discriminated against, and therefore the people who are not heard, for they are lacking in substantive power -- is to pick on them, day in and day out, without mercy and without a care, and to add to this disgrace by functionally blaming them for all of the crime and all of the troubles that America so represents. The prisons therefore are filled with people of color, because they are the easy targets to go after, for the poor and ill-educated cannot conceivably fare well in any court of law in this nation.
While America likes to get up on their high horse when it comes to other countries and their sins, injustices, and troubles; they seemingly are incapable of their own proper self-evaluation, for as bad and as discriminatory as some of these other nations are, America is itself, no shining beacon on a hill. America likes to say that the reason why so many people of color are incarcerated is because it is those people that commit the crimes. Yet, the real reason for why this is happening is effectively ignored, for the main crime of those so convicted, is foundationally the crime of being of color and poor. Those that are responsible for our governance, that will not testify to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are destined to keep making the same errors -- and until such a time that this country recognizes that to take away another person’s dignity, their self-respect, and their hope, is a gross error with material consequences, nothing whatsoever will change in this Apartheid Nation.