The Conditioned State of America, by Marvin Wade & Carolina Soto
Following is a series of four dispatches, two each, between our workshop leaders Marvin and Carolina, written in response to the Kenosha police shooting and its aftermath.
Marvin, 8/26/20
I understand why. Do you?
In the midst of all the recent murders of unarmed Black Men at the hands of white police officers, I’ve heard white folks ask the question, “well why did he move?” “Well why didn’t he just comply?” “Well why did he speak back?” “Well why did he run?” “Well why did he walk away?”Well the reason why you are seeing Black Men in these moments making these decisions, has to do with a collective sense of being tired. Tired of the history of compliance and submissive behavior during police interaction ending in a Black man being killed. These murders of Black men in most cases happen where the victim did no wrong and had no weapon. So what you are now witnessing is the fed up frustration manifesting itself in situations where Black men know they’ve done nothing wrong but yet they are put in a predicament after being stopped and harassed by police to perform and act submissively if they want to go home to their loved ones. And so now many Black men are saying, “No! No! No! I won’t sing and dance for you. So just go ahead and shoot me in the back.” It’s sad. So sad. But true. So true.
Generation after generation of Black Families have had to bear witness to the atrocities committed by police departments all across the country towards our friends, neighbors, and family members. And the realization now is that no matter how compliant, no matter how submissive, no matter how quiet we sit, no matter how much teeth we show, Black men in most police interactions will be dealt three scenarios: Led away in handcuffs, dead, or humiliated in front of his friends, family, and neighbors.
All we want is to be treated like human beings. We shouldn’t have to put on a show in order to be respected by police. We want to be respected in the same manner White citizens are afforded. Generation after generation of Black citizens have witnessed the enormous amount of respect given to White citizens by police. Even when they are non-compliant, loud and disrespectful, they are still given respect. And never are they gunned down for their behavior. The police almost always chalk it up to just“Tommy having a bad day.” an a Black man one day ever have his behavior chalked up to just a bad day and be allowed to live another one? I see not. So again what you are witnessing is a collective sense of enough is enough. What you are witnessing is Black men turning their back on a racist and corrupt police administration. Tired of playing by the same old submissive script. Tired of having to condition and train our young Black men on how to behave slave-like in order to have a chance to survive a police encounter. Tired of police officers dehumanizing us in front of our friends, family and neighbors. Tired of bearing witness to our White counterparts being shown respect, while we as African American citizens are being murdered in the street. And none of these men want to die or expect to die. They are just tired of the inequity. Tired of the unfairness. Tired of being treated as less than human.
And yes in my own conditioned state I cringed when I saw Jacob Blake turn and walk to the other side of his vehicle. I didn’t cringe because I felt he was wrong or deserved to be shot by his actions. Because of course he didn’t. I cringed because I knew that one of those white police officers would feel that he deserved to be shot. And of course one of them did. But, the difference in my reaction and the reaction of most white folks is that I understand why so many of my Black brothers are turning their back on police. Of course you don’t have to agree with it. But now you understand the reason behind it. And hopefully you can also see that none of these actions were deserving of any of them losing their life.
Carol, 8/29/20
I too Understand.
As I read your dispatch, I think back to our discussions on the media, psychopolitics, and propaganda. I remember your words: “I had to escape from two prisons, the institution, and the social.”
I felt the same way, but my stint in prison was short, if only in retrospect. I had lawyers of note and a large presence in the court. I submitted fifty character letters from friends and relatives, lawyers, microbiologists, writers, and businesspeople. I approached anyone I had touched shoulders with whose voice would be listened to. The list included the current New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, then public advocate, who wrote a letter of support because of our work together at the Nicaraguan Solidarity Network.
I did sixteen months on a conspiracy charge for conspiracy to sell marijuana and possession of two ounces. At that time, there was no discretionary sentencing. Once caught, your deal was made with the prosecutor. He decided what the crime you were obliged to confess to merited in months or years. Not the judge.
In prison, I made friends with women serving seven to ten years for answering a phone call for their boyfriends. No evidence is necessary with the RICO conspiracy law. Since leaving prison, I have met women with life sentences for conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
My story, however, is all white. The only twist was the prosecutor was black, and he was out for blood. My short time reinforced my belief in prison abolition. Before, it had only been the voices of Attica and political prisoners like Angela Davis and Leonard Peltier that had moved me. Now, it is the witnessed slave system, state-sanctioned violence, and disposable people by a global capitalist system that has no need for a labor force in the US. They have a cheaper one elsewhere, from Mexico to India, or Bangladesh to Haiti. Personally, I know that there are two justice systems in Amerikkka, one white and one black.
My point is that the second prison is racism. Don’t move, smile and be polite, always keep your hands visible so that no one can think you are reaching for something that could later be said was a gun or a knife. If I were a black man in this country, I might consider running because my chances of survival would be fifty-fifty whether I stood still or ran.
I understand my deep privilege of not experiencing these things. Still, I find racism extremely hurtful to not only those who are discriminated against but the society as a whole, which cannot move to a higher level. We have to acknowledge that the prison of racism is both structural, institutional, and personal. As incensed as I have been at discrimination in the job market because of my prison record, I know that the system of discrimination against formerly incarcerated people is aimed at and constructed for people of color.
In 2020 if you think that there are only a few bad police and that you want to denounce “isolated cases” and rogue cops, and call for community control commissions or inquiries on individual incidents, you are not living in the same country that I do. Maybe you are watching too much Judge Judy. The police help old ladies across the street. We live under the rule of law. Not. Our news media and government have taken a radicalized race problem and criminalized it. Again.
Take, for example, Tucker Carlson on Fox News: “Kenosha devolved into anarchy because the authorities abandoned the people. Those in charge, from the governor on down, refused to enforce the law. They’ve stood back and watched Kenosha burn. Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?”
Encouraged by the police, Kyle Rittenhouse, a young white racist and Trump supporter, came armed with an assault-style rifle to a peaceful demonstration and was caught on video murdering two people. He was portrayed on Fox television as a well-meaning kid, a “patriot willing to take up arms and defend” the city from “evil thugs.” After the news, you can tune into Empire to find out how rich black people get their money.
Why was Rittenhouse not arrested for another 12 hours? The current government actively calls for militias to save the white streets of America. The McCLosky’s were highlighted at the Republic National Convention, encouraging other white citizens to bear arms against blacks. On June 28, the McCLoskys emerged barefoot from their estate, armed with guns, to scare off Black Lives Matter protesters on their private street in the central west end of St. Louis. “Patricia had a pistol and was wearing black capris. Mark had an AR-15 and was wearing khakis and a light-pink polo shirt from Brooks Brothers.”
In fact, the RNC’s platform is a promotion of white supremacy, law and order, and the staking out of the parameters for 21st-century fascism in this country. The proof, of course, is in Kenosha.
This is “OK” with America? The government is calling on white conservative people to shoot and kill their fellow citizens! The government considers membership in antifascist organizations as grounds to be disappeared by secret police! Socialism, which to me, means a stab at social equity for everyone, is now grounds for the FBI to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt American political organizations. Black or White, you should be feeling the fear.
Marvin, when you lay out the basics of being a black man in this country, I cringe along with you, because I too know the outcome. The ante has been upped, and the entire structure has to go. State-sanctioned violence against people of color has been and continues to be the norm, and capitalism, named racial capitalism or not, has to change if we are all going to be able to breathe.
Marvin, 9/1/20
Peace Carol. I'm definitely feeling everything you just said. Your words got me to thinking about why I believe this country should be called, "the conditioned state of America." And it's through fear that certain powers have been able to control, mislead, and manipulate us all. This fear is ingrained in both the Black and White citizens of this country, but in different aspects. The fear we African Americans feel toward White authority was part of the "master" plan the day we stepped foot on American soil and has only gotten stronger, from the fear of slave masters to the fear of our local White "citizens." From the fear of the KKK to the fear of our local police departments. The reality today is that those who support these specific powers and these specific people in power, don’t want African Americans to feel a sense of peace or connection with them. So they've conditioned us through violence and other means to fear them. It's been this way for the past 400 years. And has been unfortunately a working formula. There's also a formula in place that enables the same powers to control through fear the white population of this country. But the fear that has been ingrained in white society is the fear of Black people. Specifically the Black man. This has also been a systematic plan going back 400years. The Klan was formed out of a false fear of the Black man. Today the media and other outlets are continuing to help perpetuate this fear.
For me this "we fear them" conditioning manifests itself each time a police car passes by me. Where most White citizens feel a sense of safety and peace when a police car passes by, for me there's always an instant fear. Fear that I forgot my ID. Fear that I fit a description. Fear that I'm a black man simply walking to the store. Fear that if I'm stopped I may be shot and killed. Or at the least handcuffed and humiliated for no reason as friends, neighbors and family members nervously look on. This brings to my mind the perp walk. An orchestrated display of mostly black men in handcuffs, not convicted of anything, just a perpetuation of fear. Not just to America, but to White America. I'm sorry for being all over, Carol. So many things are just coming to mind that have their connection to the conditioned state of America. How the perp walk and this ingrained fear of the black man has lead to a modern day form of slavery in the form of mass incarceration. This country arrests black men, throws them into an arena called a courtroom where all the participants in this game are white except him. And they all know how to play the game except him. With conditioned fear all around, White folks believing every Black man in handcuffs must be guilty. Innocent Black men taking guilty pleas for fear of being judged by 12 angry white jurors. The judicial system is inherently biased against black men and women. The prison system is filled with Black men and women racially profiled, arrested, charged, convicted, sentenced and then held for untold amounts of years. All based and birthed out of a conditioned false fear of them. A sad but true fact.
When I watched the news a week or so ago and saw almost as a footnote that a 17-year-old white kid killed 2 and injured 1, I thought to myself, Why isn't this the lead topic? and on top of that the media labeled him a "vigilante," not a monster. Or a thug. But a "vigilante." I thought to myself again, this is all part of the conditioning. Certain powers that be want us all to see violent white behavior as justifiable. Especially when it has any close connection to black liberation. And in reverse, these same people in power want society to be conditioned to see the murders of innocent unarmed black men at the hands of police as always justifiable. White violence towards Blacks has always been viewed and judged as justifiable. From the atrocities committed by slave owners and the Klan to the same atrocities committed by the police and so-called local white "citizens." Sadly, Black lives have never mattered in this country.
So for the true Black and White citizens of this country to change the oppressive system in which we live, we must first all make a conscious and concerted effort to recondition ourselves. Catching ourselves and our fellow Brothers and Sisters when we fall into the abyss of negative stereotypes, and propaganda, which sadly we are all guilty of sometimes doing. But if we truly care about one another, we can be there for each other. And be in a true United State.
Carolina, 9/3/20
Thank you for making me stand in your shoes. Marvin, the rawness of your writings and feelings makes me retreat into this analysis. Certain powers control, mislead, and manipulate us all.
The ruling class is the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political agenda. The ruling class, the capitalists, consists of those who own and control the means of production. They need to get people to labor enough to produce surplus value, the basis for profits, interest, and rent. The ruling class does not work; they live off the interest of their money. The more economic power the ruling class has, the more political power it wields. They use propaganda, lies, fear, intimidation, and murder. They pay others to do their dirty work. The police belong to them, a select category, treated differently by the law. They change the law when it suits them.
I want to break down the structure because I need you to have hope. The hope is that there can be a future without fear, superfluous color lines, borders, arbitrary violence, and a future containing your wish for all of us, your greeting, peace.
When we understand how and who is manipulating us, we can make a plan to institute change. Change can happen even when there have been 400 years of racism and inequality. Some of us are ready!
In the Sixties and Seventies, the movement for Black Liberation was a call to wake up; it created the space for women's liberation, LGBT liberation, an end to the Vietnamese war. LGBT+ liberation has been at the forefront of revolutionary movements in the last decade. When you challenge the sexual binary, you can challenge everything.
I knew Black Panthers; they took over my school and patrolled my neighborhood. My heroes, my music, my poetry were the words of liberation. It was clear that the liberation struggle was for all of us or none of us. We left corporate Amerikkka in droves. People divested their money from wars, climate harm, and anything that supported South Africa. One world, one people.
We lost to COINTELPRO, to the secret police, to fear. We were murdered, beaten, tear-gassed, surveilled, and wiretapped, and we faced prison for our beliefs. Following our all-out struggle, younger generations didn't want to go through it or were too busy fighting each other. We did not tear down the structure.
I am afraid too. I am scared of fascism in this country because it is, as you say, the "conditioned state of america." Someone once told me that the Chileans deserved Pinochet's fascist government because they did not struggle hard enough. (The Chilean people fought hard to get Salvator Allende in power only to have him bombed out of the presidential palace with every aid possible from Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger. On Sept 11, 1973, Allende's overthrow was US imperialism, the international arm of capital.) I know people who escaped Chile after being brutally tortured. Their sin was trying to get milk for starving children. There is a parallel here in this conditioned state of america. Should Trump and his overt fascist program be defeated electorally, the outcome may not be acceptable to those in power. What will they do? How do we make the neo-fascist class fall to the power of BLM and their allies?
How did it get from there to here? I think you are correct in focusing on fear.
So, where is the hope? Stop streaming and start thinking! The people who have endured the worst of the oppression are struggling to make the conditioned states of america believe that Black Lives Matter. The young people who hold meaningless jobs that usually are impermanent, part-time, and without benefits such as health care and retirement pension are in the streets. The indigenous people are maintaining their grounds as sacred against pipelines and fracking. The people who live hand to mouth have taught the nation that there is a 1% dominating us. There is a positive, a base for a movement.
Like most people, I know that if Biden wins the election, it is a vote for the status quo. Ruling class relations, economics and finance, the police, the carceral state, and the assault on the working class, women, and people of color will remain the same unless we act. Hopefully, a Biden win could pull the country back from the neofascist brink.
For a view of an alternative future and an excellent discussion on a "solidarity economy," see Monthly Review Online.
The rich and powerful can only dominate us if we give our consent.
Marvin Wade joined the Re/Creation Bed-Stuy writing workshop in 2019, shortly after coming home from a 25-year sentence primarily at Sing Sing. While inside, Marvin wrote multiple books’ worth of stories, novels, and personal essays on every bit of paper he could find, using his gifts as a writer to remake himself. He’s now learning the rudiments of writing and editing on a computer while working with both the Re/Creation team and the Fortune Society. He is a Spiritual Activist based in Brooklyn, where he has found a spiritual home with his local Quaker community. He reads his work, which is populated largely by strong women characters, every week in workshop, and now works with our team to create and edit his own dispatches. His poem “Where I’m From” was recently featured in Voices of Fortune 2020 literary magazine.
One of “the real women of Orange Is the New Black,” Carolina Soto is one of the founding members of the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Unlike the fictionalized Yoga Jones, Carolina has a long history of work in social justice and advocacy, and is a seasoned painter and visual artist. Since beginning her work with Re/Creation, Carolina has increased her confidence and aptitude with both the written and spoken word, composing speeches and essays for her advocacy work and as well as written memoir. In particular, her essays and memoirs illustrate her vast capacity for empathy in her descriptions of people with whom she shared time inside. She now splits her time between living in New York City and the Dominican Republic.
