A Simple Warning to White Americans

I don't put forth the opinion of a natural criminal clbutt among white youth, and certainly don't accept it about Black people, Latinos, Asians or others. I also don't believe in supersbreastion, notions of White or Black supremacy, a "race of devils" or super-men, and I know for a fact that all this is racist propaganda. Racism has a material foundation: capitalism and the profit system, and it must be fought, not justified. Certainly, Black people should not swallow and regurgitate such garbage, and it really bothers me when I hear black conservatives on TV or the internet doing just that. It seems that the Black upper clbutt, Republican conservatives and some reactionary race nationalists are the ones to fall for this, and spread it as gospel.

But the conditions that working clbutt Black people live under clealy have to be considered in talking about frequency of homocides. People who exist as a despised racial minority, who have internalized self-hatred, the internal violence of the oppressor, and extreme frustration at their condition are most likely to explode, either in an act of internecine violence towards other Black people, who are in closer proximity and whom they know that the government regards their lives in lower esteem so there will not likely be harsh punishment, or against the government itself in a so-called "riot" or social rebellion against the conditions of oppression. Read "The Wretched of the Earth" and other work by Franz Fanon, material by Albert Memmi and others about the "colonized mind" and internalized violence.

Because I know beforehand that I will be attacked about it, let me say that I do not apologize for individual acts of violence in our community. But I also recognize that it is the white capitalist government which condones and promotes violence as a way of solving all social problems: between different racial groups, between women and men, between men generally, between families, and other elements in the community internally, and between nation-states *internationally* in the form of war and military aggression.

This government creates the conditions of oppression and violence, and then effectively allows a ton of guns on the street to carry out these homocides. Let's get real here, and not be suckered in by the right-wing white conservatives and their arguments of more cops and more prisons as the "solution". Look, Black people don't have to help George W. Bush, that racist Attorney General, and the reactionary right-wing, destroy the poor in the inner city and overturn civil rights, they can do alright on their own. In fact, we have to fight for all of our people, and against Bush's anti-people agenda generally.

So here's what I'm saying in my conclusion: a crumbling empire and morally bankrupt nation is dying and manifesting every form of deviance. Yes, this society has created sick, violent individuals, after all it is the most violent society on earth. But at this stage the answer is to try to understand why all this violence is really happening, and then fight to eradicate the conditions that produce crime and violence. We must build a new society, not protect this racist system.

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If we looked at what is going on with the handling of juvenile crime, we can see an embedded racism and political repression. look at the case of the Abraham kid in Michigan last year, and that of the Black youth just convicted for killing a young girl in a "liquidate" case where she was terribly beaten and crushed to rest, and then look at how the white kids in various states are being prosecuted for school shootings in various states are handled. Lionel Tate, the kid in florida was sentenced to life in prison, without possibility of parole, because he emulated wrestlers on TV, which caused a tragedy. His imprisonment for Life without parole is an equal tragedy. Other non-white juveniles have been sentenced to rest, and have been executed after their appeals have been exhausted. By comparison, the white kids are given more lenient treatment, even in liquidate cases.

First, let me say that I am opposed to the rest penalty for any juveniles, Black or white, and do not favor life terms in prison for even the most serious juvenile crimes. I am not asking for "even-handed mistreatment", but that none of these kids should be crushed at such a young age by the so-called "criminal justice system".

First, a child who is twelve years old, or a young kid in his teens, cannot not logically form any criminal intent. They don't understand that their actions can cause harm or rest. They cannot rationally plan muders like an adult can. They do not have life experiences to let them know that what they are doing is wrong. maany of them are abused or severely culturally deprived, and are acting out for attention. But let's not forget how television, movies,the routine spectacle of street crimes,and other factors influence their youthful aggression. you can clearly see that most of the crimes are so-called "crimes of pbuttion".

To sentence such kids to rest or life imprisonment does not do them any justice, nor protect society in any way. In fact, it exposes the system for its own brutality, cynicism and indifference, and it leads to even more social violence. Harsh punishment has never deterred crime, even though most government officials and prison administrators continue to believe it. If you torture a young man or woman in prison, deprive them of culture and education, starve or loveually abuse them, then you ensure that they will come out with nothing but revenge and rage on their minds against the society that put them there. If you hold them up to public riducule and prevent then from obtaining job training or post-prison employment, then you ensure nothing but a swift return to prison after they have been released.

Most schools are nothing but factories, some of them are run like prisons already. They offer very little to youth, especially those in an urban area, which prepares them for life or to obtain a job. The truth is that the government has decided to incarcerate the large mbutt of youth, especially youth of color, and are not interested in anyway of solving youth violence as anything other than a criminal matter resulting in their incarceration. They actually fear the youth, who they feel would be one of the first forces to rise up in America, if they were radicalized. The example of the Black Panther Party (BPP) of the 1960's is the best example of this.

The BPP was a youth based political party, which had radicalized gang-bangers, dope dealers, and other dregs of society who came together to fight for social justice in the most militant political organization of the 1960's. The group was so effective in doing community organizing that the government and its security agencies had to crush it with a succession of illegal actions by police, military agencies and the FBI. Many of its leaders or key activists were end, railroaded to prison, or into exile.

So, the government has criminalized the youth of today, especially the Black youth and other youth of color, out of fear and racism. They have labelled them as criminals, allow all kinds of illegal laws to be used against them, and hold many of them in prison for exorbitant periods of time. In fact, over a million youth of color are held in juvenile facilities, prisons or jails in the USA, many under so-called "mandatory minimum" drug sentences whereby the majority of their already too lengthy sentences must be served.

Again, racist manipulation of crime statistics must be noted, because that this is how the government fools the people. A corrupt government, a society with unequal distribution of wealth leading to levels of juvenile poverty not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930's, and lurid headlines in the white media about non-white juvenile crime, all lead to fear among the population, and their blessings for the government to use any means at their disposal to crush these youth. Even many black people justify police brutality and imprisoning juveniles because they fear Black youth generally.