STEREOTYPES AND LIGHT SPEED in Adventures From Prison

So we’ve had an interesting week in the library. It began on Monday afternoon with a young, black drug dealer who felt he was better than everyone else. Normally our procedure for handing out open televisions is simple – first come, first serve. Inmates arrive and set their ID’s on the counter in a neat row then wait for they’re name to be called. This guy decided to switch around the order of the ID’s when no one was looking. He figured that since they were old and white (the guys he pushed back) that they were sex offenders and deserved to get messed with. One of these men decided to complain about his mistreatment quite loudly and it got back to our boss. Personally, I think he did the right thing for two reasons: first, I don’t think any inmate has the right to judge or punish another for his past. We are here to change and most people with those types of charges really do – I think the recidivism rate is about 1% for those who commit no contact cybercrimes – and secondly, this picked on individual is confined to a freakin’ wheelchair!
My boss instantly abolished the television waiting list. Anyone who wants to watch TV must sign up with her a week ahead of time and any open TVs go unused. Most guys had no issue with this change…except for the same idiot who started this whole mess. The very next morning, upon learning that the wait list was discontinued from his own actions, he began loudly declaring that this was a racist move by the education staff. He blustered on to anyone in the vicinity that our boss was tired of all of the black men on the waiting list and that she disapproved of them watching the black history programs (which btw she ordered) and learning about their culture. (Translation: He was pissed he couldn’t watch half naked women on the Shaka-Zulu TV series we ordered – this by his own admission, a week earlier, was the only reason he watched the show).
I just stood there in shock. Never before had I ever seen someone turn a consequence of their own actions into a racist diatribe so quickly. I’d have been impressed if it wasn’t so insane! This type of person, which sadly is the majority around me, is what gives black American’s such a bad name. I’m not a racist person, but this prison experience has definitely soured the equality with which I once viewed the minority races. I have found, sadly, that for a percentage of the most offensive racial stereotypes there are in fact truths behind them. After leaving here, I will be forced by my experiences to be wary of people of all races – including my own – as I have personally witnessed the lowest of each in action. I promise myself that I won’t let it influence my actions, that everyone will have an opportunity to prove themselves, but I hate that I no longer believe that negative stereotypes are unjustified.
It makes sense to me now why so much racism is most highly concentrated in poorer areas of the U.S. Those people are most likely to encounter this lowest common denominator of each race, the percentage which defines the race by their negative actions. A great deal of that comes from a lack of weight being placed on education in those areas. Often this is due to reasons of survival, so I do not fault them, but that ignorance plus radically different cultural mores propagate those stereotypes and makes them true. Even here in prison, I have never met a single well educated black, Hispanic or white man that contributes to the stereotypes. It’s an unarguable link in my mind between education and behavior. When the mind is trained to think critically, as is the focus of most education beyond sixth grade, it begins to discern that while certain behavior may be acceptable within your individual culture that does not hold true in any environment where many cultures are placed in close proximity. That understanding is vital for many races to live in harmony. Concessions must be made by each party or everything breaks down. It is not the knowledge one finds in school that prevents racism, but the training of our minds to interpret situations with empathy and flexibility.
This is why in an environment such as prison, where the average education for most reaches only a year or two, past grade school, racism is so prevalent. It will never vanish unless the caliber of criminal suddenly shifts, but that’s as likely as breaking the speed of light.