Black America and COVID-19

       Conditions in jails and prisons are inhumane. Incarcerated persons do not receive adequate food, clean water, health care, and mental health services. I know this because of the countless phone calls, letters, and conversations I have had with my mother during and beyond her incarceration. Therefore, COVID 19 in prisons and jails is a death sentence for every person incarcerated during this pandemic. Their deaths affect every child, sibling, aunt, cousin, neighbor, friend, mentor, faith leader, etc. Mass decarceration during this pandemic is essential business and needs to happen now. Black lives are human lives, no matter which sides of the bars they are on.

       Mass criminalization is a weapon of white supremacy used to oppress and marginalize the Black community. The defunding of housing, education, social services, and other community resources to fund prison construction, over-policing, and racist policies result in what Michelle Alexander calls "The New Jim Crow." In her work, Alexander explains how presidents used segregationist language and disguised their dangerous language in political rhetoric in media outlets to instill a fear of Black persons into white America. The language included some form of war: "War on Crime" or "War on Drugs." News outlets from television to print stigmatized the images of Black men and Black women by instilling Black stereotypes as "crack whores," "crack babies," and "gangbangers." Crime was intentionally written into the fabric of Black life by white supremacy.  By labeling a person as an inmate or criminal enables systems and people to ignore the existence of persons who are incarcerated and deem them unworthy of fundamental human rights. Children of the "criminal," "addict," "alcoholic," "crack whore," "gangbanger," and "thug," understand how damaging it is to be rendered invisible and silenced because of a system that would devalue our humanity. I am one of those children. The incarceration of my parents during my childhood, and portions of my adulthood, has shaped my emotional and social formation because grieving their absence forced me to grow into an adult who holds stories of pain, longing, and grief.

Co-Curator: Ashley Lipscomb, The Institute for Anti-Racist Education

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