A plantation is a large agricultural property that produces a cash crop for profit.
A large workforce is needed to make a plantation both productive and profitable. The plantation system is primarily what built generational wealth in America. In fact, cialis the plantation culture made white folks rich (generationally) and black folks slaves, cost which consequently had a negative impact on enslaved African people (generationally) on multiple fronts: economically, socially, politically and psychologically. The legacy of slavery’s impact on the black community cannot be underestimated. However, there is a new system, a new plantation not based on agricultural interests at all, at least not exclusively, but rather on human capital in the form of labor. This labor is compulsory and any compensation is meager, at most, if compensation is remitted at all. This new plantation is the (P.I.C.) Prison Industrial Complex, and it is alive and thriving in the United States of America. The outcome(s), as sinister as it may seem, are extremely parallel to the old plantation system of the antebellum south.
In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander explains how the prison industrial complex replicates systemically the structural and institutionalized racism on which the institution of chattel slavery was conceived, designed and executed. In speaking about the various mechanisms that support the P.I.C., Alexander states the following:
“…the War on Drugs and mass incarceration prevents many African Americans from being truly free. The system of mass incarceration has a number of working components. For drug offenders, it begins with the arrest, followed by a period of formal control either through imprisonment, parole or probation. After release, convicts experience the “period of invisible punishment,” a series of legal discrimination in housing, education, and employment, as well as social rejection…”
Of course our criminal justice system claims to be “officially” colorblind and non-racist in its policing and enforcement procedures, but the data clearly speaks to the contrary. Blacks are more likely to be stopped by police, more likely to be arrested and more likely to be incarcerated due to arbitrary sentencing policies and racial profiling practices. The burgeoning rate at which black males are incarcerated in this country is NOT due to the rate at which crimes are committed or who is committing those crimes. So why then is the level of incarceration at epidemic proportion? And why is the demographic prison population in direct contradiction to the actual population percentages of whites, blacks and Latino(s) within the US? It is because the prison system has become an economic boon for individuals, corporations and municipalities all over the country. The P.I.C. makes money on the backs of the incarcerated men and women who are locked up inside it. In fact, government entities routinely receive compensation for exporting prisoners to another state. Prisoners work long hours and barely make fifty cents to a dollar an hour. Compare that to even minimum wage workers and prison labor is a cash cow in keeping overhead and expenses low while tilting the balance sheet to mega profits. The populations of people preyed upon within this insidious system are black and brown bodies. The legacy of slavery and the lessons it taught us have apparently not been learned. There is no way, unless you choose to ignore the truth, that you can deny that the new plantation system is alive and well in the USA. Talk to me! What do you think?
Dr.T
Artistic Director and Founder
The Conciliation Project
Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University
DrT@Margin2theCenter.com
www.theconciliationproject.org
