Four years ago, after Donald Trump debated Joe Biden, we convened a group of ten Black imprisoned college students sentenced to prison terms of at least 10 years to discuss their views on race, culture and politics. At the time, eight of the ten said they’d vote for Biden, largely on the basis of their respective families’ lifelong allegiance to the Democratic party and Trump’s inflammatory language around race—particularly, his “fine people on both sides” comment. We recently sat down with the same crew to reflect, take their temperature and find out if their views have changed now that Kamala Harris is atop the ticket and Biden exits the stage.
Trevonnne, a 27-year-old former Crip, said “Biden wasn’t just out of it and embarrassing, he was as bad as them cats whose statues people had been pulling down. I read what he said about guys like us back in the day when he was arguing for the Crime Bill in ’94 and I saw what he didn’t do when he was VP with Obama—they gave the HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] nothing, but Trump did. Kamala isn’t any better.”
LeRoy, a 30-year-old former Bay Area stick-up kid, described how he was “raised to think the Republicans were all hella racist, while the Dems were for the poor folks, which included us. I tripped out when I discovered the Dems were the ones who actually supported slavery, Jim Crow, didn’t support the Civil Rights Act, didn’t want us to vote and expanded the number of federal crimes that carried life sentences. Kamala buried brothers over weed and then laughed about it.”
Marcus, a 25-year-old former Blood, told us, “I see the way Democrats are replacing imprisoned Blacks with immigrants using an open border policy as the modern-day version of indentured servitude. They are creating a new underclass in order to bring in cheap labor. Harris coordinated that.”
Darius, a 26-year old former Crip, pointed out how “Clinton was just as bad and maybe worse, cuz not only did he sign the crime bill that put a grip of our fathers away for mandatory minimums, but his wife, who also ran at the same time, dedicated a book she wrote to Robert Byrd, who was a crazy-ass racist Senator who was an admitted recruiter for the KKK. Dude used the N-word on Fox News Sunday, twice! He also filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for fourteen hours, which outlawed segregation and voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1977, he was elected as the majority leader in the Senate, so, that whole party was as bad as him, going way back. Biden wrote that law, so to me, the Democrats never cared about Black people. Kamala? Samesies.”
James, a 33-year-old former drug dealer, explained how “Trump was out of pocket for some of what he said, but if you peep his policies, every damn economic indicator you could count for Black folk was record setting, be it the highest earnings or the lowest unemployment. The only thing I don’t dig is him trying to indemnify the cops, cause they knock us down with impunity. I read Liz Hinton’s book From The War On Poverty and she traced mass incarceration to the Democrats. If you can’t balance a budget or close a border, you dirty. I agree with Marcus—they really trying to keep us in prison while they usher in these immigrants who will work the worst jobs for the lowest pay. It’s about cheap labor. That’s what slavery was all about too. Once we couldn’t be worked to death, we had to be housed in projects. They criminalized our areas so we could be imprisoned for selling dope the CIA imported. Now we like slaves again doing labor in prison. It’s the same playbook—all Democrats, as far back as you can look. Chasing votes.”
Perry, a 30-year-old from out of state, was succinct—”Democrats want us controlled by drugs, economics, prisons and the media. They need us on that intellectual plantation.”
LaMonte, a 25-year-old first generation immigrant from Canada, said, “I agree with Marcus. Democrats enslaved us, put us in prison, praised Margaret Sanger for sterilizing us, aborted us in clinics, placed in the hood next to liquor stores, monetized our aborted fetuses for research in the name of fake reproductive rights and now they want to replace us with a lighter shade of cheaper labor just as we are waking up. I’m awake, not woke. They want us in that plantation mentality—stuck in prison—where books are outlawed and knowledge is forbidden. I know too much now to ever fall for a Democrat. Kamala admitted to inhaling while laughing about it after putting hella BIPOC defendants on the carceral shelf for weed. Her pivot to the radical left doesn’t erase what she did as AG. The Constitution is the only ally we have now.”
Several new voices chimed in with similar perspectives, though we spoke to many older Black residents who share these critiques of the left but still don’t trust Trump to protect Black bodies from police abuses. The issue of safety during police encounters remains a problem that Trump’s recent rhetoric isn’t resolving. Indemnification doesn’t ensure constitutionality during citizen encounters with police—it creates a license to kill with impunity.
These views reflect a minority perspective among our Black peers; however, having a majority of opinions in such a small cohort swing within a single election cycle might prove instructive for observers who wonder about what Black men without access to social media attending college in prison really think about politics. Though far from scientific, if this sampling is any sort of indication of how the mainstream media’s promotion of Harris is impacting folks who only consume legacy media, we’d expect a larger portion of the Black electorate to vote for the Trump ticket—provided he’s not in prison or dead by then.
Democrats should pay attention. Prisons are a bellwether.
©B3
