http://gawker.com/a-letter-from-ray-jas ... 1536073598
Tl;dr: Basically what he says is that the key to all is empathy, empathy allows people not to feel sorrow or contempt for others but to see ourselves in others. It's only via empathy that we can achieve real justice. Prisons, especially now that they are becoming private, has been profiting from inmates while the government passes harsher laws. Why? More people into prisons would mean more profit for these institutions, crime remains the same, it's the business that is becoming larger at the expense of turning these men into slaves who will face mind-breaking torture if they refuse to do the work. In the end is not about crime and punishment, it's about crime and profit.
I think 'empathy' is one of the most powerful words in this world that is expressed in all cultures. This is my underlining theme. I do not own a dictionary, so I can't give you the Oxford or Webster definition of the word, but in my own words, empathy means 'putting the shoe on the other foot.'
Empathy. A rich man would look at a poor man, not with sympathy, feeling sorrow for the unfortunate poverty, but also not with contempt, feeling disdain for the man's poverish state, but with empathy, which means the rich man would put himself in the poor man's shoes, feel what the poor man is feeling, and understand what it is to be the poor man.
Empathy breeds proper judgement. Sympathy breeds sorrow. Contempt breeds arrogance. Neither are proper judgements because they're based on emotions. That's why two people can look at the same situation and have totally different views. We all feel differently about a lot of things. Empathy gives you an inside view. It doesn't say 'If that was me...', empathy says, 'That is me.'
What that does is it takes the emotions out of situations and forces us to be honest with ourselves. Honesty has no hidden agenda. Thoreau proposed that 'one honest man' could morally regenerate an entire society.
Looking through the eyes of empathy & honesty, I'll address some of the topics you mentioned. It's only my perspective.
The Justice system is truly broken beyond repair and the sad part is there is no way to start over. Improvements can be made. If honest people stand up, I think they will be made over time. I know the average person isn't paying attention to all the laws constantly being passed by state & federal legislation. People are more focused on their jobs, raising kids and trying to find entertainment in between time. The thing is, laws are being changed right and left.
A man once said that revolution comes when you inform people of their rights. Martin Luther King said a revolution comes by social action and legal action working hand in hand. I'm not presenting any radical revolutionary view, the word revolution just means change. America changes as the law changes.
Under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution all prisoners in America are considered slaves. We look at slavery like its a thing of the past, but you can go to any penitentiary in this nation and you will see slavery. That was the reason for the protests by prisoners in Georgia in 2010. They said they were tired of being treated like slaves. People need to know that when they sit on trial juries and sentence people to prison time that they are sentencing them to slavery.
If a prisoner refuses to work and be a slave, they will do their time in isolation as a punishment. You have thousands of people with a lot of prison time that have no choice but to make money for the government or live in isolation. The affects of prison isolation literally drive people crazy. Who can be isolated from human contact and not lose their mind? That was the reason California had an uproar last year behind Pelican Bay. 33,000 inmates across California protested refusing to work or refusing to eat on hunger-strikes because of those being tortured in isolation in Pelican Bay.
The other side of the coin is there are those in the corporate world making money off prisoners, so the longer they're in prison, the more money is being made. It's not about crime & punishment, it's about crime & profit. Prison is a billion dollar industry. In 1996, there were 122 prisons opened across America. Companies were holding expos in small towns showing how more prisons would boost the economy by providing more jobs.
How can those that invest in prisons make money if people have sentences that will allow them to return to free society? If people were being rehabilitated and sent back into the cities, who would work for these corporations? That would be a bad investment. In order for them to make money, people have to stay in prison and keep working. So the political move is to tell the people they're tough on crime and give people longer sentences.
It's not that crime is the issue. Crime still goes on daily. It's that the politics surrounding crime have changed and it has become a numbers game. Dollars & Cents. You have people like Michael Jordan who invest millions of dollars in the prison system. Any shrewed businessman would if you have no empathy for people locked up and you just want to make some money.
t's really an epidemic, the number of blacks locked up in this country. That's why I look, not only at my own situation, but why all of us young blacks are in prison. I've come to see, it's largely due to an indentity crisis. We don t know our history. We don't know how to really indentify with white people. We are really of a different culture, but by being slaves, we lost ourselves.
When you have a black man name John Williams and a white man name John Williams, the black man got his name from the white man. Within that lies a lost of identity. There are blacks in this country that don't even consider themselves African. Well, what are we? When did we stop being African? If you ask a young black person if they're African, they will say 'No, I'm American'. They've lost their roots. They think slavery is their roots. Again, its a strong identity crisis.
You take the identity crisis, mix it with capitalism, where money comes before empathy, and you'll have a lot of young blacks trying to get money by any means because they're trying to get out of poverty or stay out of poverty. Now, money is what they try to find an identity in. They feel like if they get rich, legal or illegal, they've become somebody. Which in America is partly true because superficially we hail the rich and despise the poor. We give Jay-Z more credit than we do Al Sharpton. What has Jay-Z done besides get rich? Yet we see dollar signs and somehow give more respect to the man with the money.
People point their fingers at young blacks, call them thugs and say they need to pull up their pants. That's fine, but you're not feeding them any knowledge. You're not giving them a vision. All you're saying is be a square like me. They're not going to listen to you because you have guys like Jay-Z and Rick Ross who are millionaires and sag their pants. Changing the way they dress isn't changing the way they think. As the Bible says, 'Where there's no vision the people perish'. Young blacks need to learn their identity so they can have more respect for the blacks that suffered for their liberties than they have for someone talking about selling drugs over a rap beat who really isn't selling drugs.
Before Martin Luther King was killed he drafted a bill called 'The Bill for the Disadvantaged'. It was for blacks and poor whites. King understood that in order to have a successful life, you have to decrease the odds of failure. You have to change the playing field. I'm not saying there's no personal responsibility for success, that goes without saying, but there's also a corporate responsibility. As the saying goes, when you see someone who has failed, you see someone who was failed.
Imagine you're a young white guy facing capital murder charges where you can receive the death penalty... the victim in the case is a black man... when you go to trial and step into the courtroom... the judge is a black man... the two State prosecutors seeking the death penalty on you... are also black men... you couldn't afford an attorney, so the Judge appointed you two defense lawyers who are also black men... you look in the jury box... there's 8 more black people and 4 hispanics... the only white person in the courtroom is you... How would you feel facing the death penalty? Do you believe you'll receive justice?
He also talked about the amount of black people behind bars. How slavery caused them to have an identity crisis, black people were taken away, given a white man's name and were removed from their roots, what this has caused is that the roots of black people, instead of being African, has now become 'slavery'. Now combine this with an oppressive system that worships money over empathy, you have people with no identity trying to reach and find their identity via accumulating money by any means.
Society tends to blame black people and telling them to up their game, get a better education, when this society itself excludes them from their roots, trying to mold them into this very same system which they don't identify with. This very same education that tells them "be a square like me". And then when it comes to the judicial system, it's these same black people who have to face trial where the judge will must likely be white, the jury must likely be white, the prosecutor will be white and then you get appointed some attorneys, who will also be white. So what kind of justice can we find when the education and the judgement you receive is made for white people and by white people?
It's the system who lacks empathy towards minorities and unprivileged groups.
So anyway, read this!