(Akiit.com) A new American slave trade is booming, warn prison activists, following the release of a report that again outlines outrageous numbers of young Black men in prison and increasing numbers of adults undergoing incarceration. That slave trade is connected to money states spend to keep people locked up, profits made through cheap prison labor and for-profit prisons, excessive charges inmates and families may pay for everything from tube socks to phone calls, and lucrative cross country shipping of inmates to relieve overcrowding and rent cells in faraway states and counties.

Advocates note that the constitution’s 13th amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States, but provided an exception—in cases where persons have been “duly convicted” in the United States and territory it controls, slavery or involuntary servitude can be reimposed as a punishment, they add. The majority of prisoners are Black and Latino, though they are minorities in terms of their numbers in the population.

According to “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” published by the Pew Center on the States, one in nine Black men between the ages of 20-34 are incarcerated compared to one in 30 other men of the same age. Like the overall adult ratio, one in 100 Black women in their mid-to-late 30s is imprisoned.

“Everyone is feeding off of our down-trodden condition to feed their capitalism, greed and lust for money. They are buying prison stock on the market and this is why they want to silence the restorative voice of Minister Louis Farrakhan, because he is repairing those who fill and would support the prison system as slaves,” said Student Minister Abdullah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam Prison Ministry.

The report states that the rising trend stems from more than a parallel increase in crime or surge in the population at large, but it is driven by policies that put more criminals in prison, extending their stay through measures like California’s Three Strikes Law.

Atty. Barbara Ratliff, a L.A.-based reparations activist, said the prison industrial complex’s extension of the slave plantation plays out in a pattern of behavior that Black people must study in order to survive. “I’m not talking about behavior of the individual incarcerate, but the pattern of treatment that digs into institutional racism. Corporate profit from prisons is no different than how slave owners received benefit from their labor, and that impact remained even after slavery. For instance, freed Blacks were arrested and put on chain gangs for their labor which continued to benefit slave owners, so this is no accident,” she said.

Inmates produce items or perform services for almost every major industry. They sew clothes, fight fires and build furniture, but they are paid little or no wages, somewhere between five cents and almost $2.

Phone companies charge high amounts for collect calls and inmate care packages can no longer be sent from families directly. Inmates must purchase products from companies to be sent in, which feeds capitalism, activists charge.

Although the costs of prisons is skyrocketing and consuming state budgets, money continues to be spent to push more Black youth into prison, activists assert. Many education and prison advocates charge there is a plot to populate U.S. prisons based on the dumbing down of America’s youth. Figures show those most likely to be incarcerated and to return generally have the lowest level of education. The report said, “While states don’t necessarily choose between higher education and corrections, a dollar spent in one area is unavailable for another.”
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(Akiit.com) It’s not uncommon nowadays to walk down the street and hear young Black girls and women having a conversation speaking to each other disrespectfully and calling each other bitches and hoes. Some as young as high school or middle school age girls will be on the bus, standing outside or even walking through the mall freely using these dehumanizing terms.

We speak amongst ourselves disrespectfully as young Black women, but we get upset when a guy says “bitch.” Then we wonder why many handsome successful Black men don’t look our way and date outside their race. How is someone else going to respect us, if we don’t respect each other?

Sad, but true … the word bitch has become a common word used in the vocabulary of young Black men and women. Just like the word nigga, the word bitch used to be looked down upon as being degrading and dehumanizing. A Black woman would get offended by a man who called her a bitch or a hoe and a Black man would get offended at a white person or someone of any other race who called him a nigga (or nigger).

Now, we don’t even get offended when these things happen because we have allowed it to seep into our culture and become part of our basic language. We try to adopt the word bitch like Black people have adopted the word nigga - both attempts have failed and have caused us to be looked at as an ignorant race in the eyes of other races and a generation that has failed our ancestors and past leaders.

How many times have you gotten on a bus or on the BART and heard a group of young women or men of any race other then Black (or who weren’t tryna act Black) speak to each other with open disrespect or use racial phrases that were invented to degrade their race? Never … and you never will because we as a race are allowing the words that people have created to dehumanize our race lower our self-worth and make us look un-educated and made it a part of our daily lives.

The word bitch in an insult that attacks the identity of a young Black woman and it’s like we are OK with being called and calling ourselves bitches. I have to admit that I am also a victim of this ignorance because my friends and I used to do it all the time, but I realized how stupid it made me feel and look amongst the outside world. Black people have to stop allowing ourselves to be down rated and we have to stop accepting these words into our vocabulary - we must delete these words from our vocabulary and make it something that is as horrible as being called a coon or being hung from a noose.
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(Akiit.com) Fayetteville, North Carolina - As the Daily Tar Heel breaking news message came across my computer screen, I remember feeling numbness as I read it. The message indicated that the white female whose unidentified body had been found in Chapel Hill had now been identified as that of Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president.

I remember immediately picking up the telephone and calling our vice chancellor for student affairs. As you can imagine, colleges and universities across our nation are on a heightened sense of alert because of the acts of violence that have occurred recently on college campuses.

I wanted to notify the vice chancellor that the body found was a student and ask her to inform FSU’s student body president so that our students could express their sympathy. We share in the grief of any institution when tragedy strikes its campus, but we share a greater sense of loss when such violence occurs at one of our sister institutions in the UNC system.

After talking with her a few moments, I hung up the telephone and immediately thought to myself, “I sure hope it was not a black man who killed her.” I repeated this several times to my co-workers and family as the search for the killer began. They, too, expressed the same sentiment.

As I began to hear more about the wonderful person Carson was and the amazing life she led in such a short period of time, I hoped more and more that a black man was not involved in her murder.

Finally, when news came that the police had a photo of a man who tried to use her ATM card and the man was described as an “African-American in his late teens or early twenties,” my heart sank.

It is not the point of this column to debate the innocence or guilt of the young black men charged with Carson’s murder. Only our criminal justice system can decide that. My point is to share the distress that many blacks feel when a black man is charged or convicted of a violent act, particularly a violent act against someone of another race.

When that happens, we take it personally because we know that non-blacks are apt to judge an entire race of people on the action of one black man.
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(Akiit.com) There is an adage that the most segregated hour in America is at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Therein lies the difference in reaction to the recently released videos featuring provocative statements by Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor for the past 20 years, Dr. Jeremiah Wright.

Most African Americans who view these video snippets know that they are taken out of context and can be taken with a grain of salt. Sermons by Black pastors are often filled with hyperbole, colorful language and cultural cadences. In an average year, Wright probably delivered at least 50 sermons on a variety of topics.

Meanwhile, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which Wright pastored for 35 years until he retired in February, continued to be a beacon of light to people in the surrounding community, providing drug and alcohol recovery, marriage counseling, prison outreach and other community services. As in most Black churches, the members of Trinity engage in the Christian rituals of baptism and communion, as well as baby dedications and rites of passage ceremonies. The church’s Afrocentric focus, which teaches the principles of self-reliance and self-determination that conservatives claim to embrace, is designed to build its members’ self-esteem and solve some of the intractable problems within the African-American community.

Wright himself spent six years in the military, has four earned degrees and has been the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. He is the author of several books, including two titled What Can Happen When We Pray? and Good News!: Sermons of Hope for Today’s Families. He was born in 1941, came of age during the crucible of the Civil Rights Movement and, as do many Black pastors, speaks to the pain and suffering many African Americans feel from the nation’s legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination.

Unfortunately, because few non-Black people have spent any time in Black churches, the recent video clips of Wright shown on cable news channels conjure up fears and anxieties that are, quite frankly, unwarranted but understandable. These video clips were first promulgated several weeks ago on Fox News by commentators Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. One can only guess at their motivations, but it appears that they want to sully Obama’s image by tying him to Wright and implying that Obama shares the same attitudes that the videos portray. If successful, this could be enough to frighten the bejesus out of enough White voters to deny Obama the nomination and/or the presidency.

Among the remaining presidential contenders, all have had challenges with religious leaders who have made shocking statements. Texas televangelist John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain last month, has described Catholicism as a contributor to Hitler’s anti-Semitism and a “false cult.” On Feb. 26, McCain appeared at a rally with the Rev. Rod Parsley, an Ohio minister who is notable for suggesting that the United States should be at war with Islam. Hillary Clinton, for her part, belongs to a Methodist church that has decided to perform ceremonies joining homosexual couples.
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(Akiit.com) While out and about with my wife last night, I decided to drop by a friend’s house… Luckily they were there, as I’m amaze at how different their living room looks… Bright colors now, and they even have two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling… Got me a little jealous, as maybe one day I shall be able to decorate my palace like that… Until then I shall not worry, but if you are one looking to upgrade your home feel free to visit LightingShowcase.com…

Written By CTA