Who’ You Callin’ “Prodigal” Son?
Black people in America are constantly scrutinized and criticized for the decisions that they make. We are treated as if we are the proverbial prodigal son who requested his inheritance whilst still in his youth, then proceeded to squander it living a debauched life (perhaps poppin’ bottles and makin’ it rain…?), only to return home a short time later begging for a handout from his estranged thrifty and hardworking family; hoping to get a job as a field hand on the family farm. The presumption is that Black people are always in such dire straits socially, legally and economically because of choices made by Black people, as though we have ‘squandered’ our opportunity and actual resources. If we didn’t buy Jordans or sag our jeans down off our asses, we wouldn’t always be in trouble with the law. (When did manner of dress become a crime, anyway?) If we chose marriage before having children, we would have less poverty. There are probably thousands of things we should or should not do to change our circumstances for the better if we listened to general wisdom. But let us deconstruct this problem. What are these actual resources we are squandering? According to the biblical account I reference, the prodigal son actually did receive his share of the family estate (Luke 15:11-13). Black people in this country have never received a fair share of our inheritance. Debt and indignity and crimes against humanity are all that have ever been bequeathed to us; never the tangible assets our blood, sweat and tears actually produced…those went to the white hegemony.
Let us consider some details about our time in this country.
It is highly problematic—literally, a crime against humanity—to rob an entire class of people rightful remuneration of its labor. Rather notable about this type of human rights’ violation is that all levels of governance concurred that it was not only legal, but right and proper to prevent adult human beings from being duly compensated for actual labor they regularly and repeatedly performed over lifetimes. Whatever the discomfiture surrounding the topic of human bondage at the Second Continental Congress, what made it into Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States’ Constitution (the very beginning) was “three-fifths all other persons” not free, not Indian, and not under indenture. Meanwhile, whites who existed through these same generations were having a very different experience: working for wages, owning, aspiring to own, participating in government, creating and growing equity in a society and an economy from which dividends were expected and demanded. In other words, virtually every white household enjoyed some aspect of citizenship while almost no Black household did. Factor in that many of these Black adults who were robbed of the fruits of their labor, were also 1) parents who should have been working hard to secure a better future for their offspring (every parent’s job since the institution of parenthood began), and 2) sons and daughters whose parents may have needed support in their advanced years, perhaps doubly inducing the adult laborers to throw themselves into their work to create a better life for the successive generation and, as well, provide some repose or respite for the elders who had already sacrificed so much for the adult laborer’s well-being. Of course we know for slaves, none of this would have been allowed to happen; there was no such thing as an inter-generational transfer of wealth. The point of slavery was to amass all enslaved labor and transfer the profits of said labor to whomever a) owned the slave, b) was hired to oversee or otherwise attend to the slave, and c) all other parties not slaves whose job was created or enhanced because slavery was an extant aspect of the economy and social order. Slavery existed because it benefited everyone not the slave; there were far more beneficiaries than just the master. Yet, any reprisal experienced by the slave, was said to be the result of the slave’s own doing, as if the slave had a will of his/her own. Didn’t pick enough cotton? Get the lash. Dawdled at chores? Get the lash. Back-talked to Massa’? Get the lash. We have a carefully crafted, centuries’ old tradition of making Black people responsible for our own “choices”, when the options with which we are presented (in addition to being a conglomerate of various human rights abuses) are by design not ones we have created. Black people have the least amount of agency and autonomy, but are required to accept the most responsibility for our actions.
To be clear, I am not saying that we as Black people should not be responsible for our actions. I am saying that white people should be made to be responsible for theirs. The same society which imposed ‘three strikes’ and justifies “stop and frisk” for Blacks has allowed white people to prey upon Black people’s pursuit of prosperity and their domestic tranquility rapaciously and with impunity for centuries, before slavery (when controlled and imposed labor was merely indentured servitude), during slavery, and even well after. The cost to Black people for having been victimized by this horrific campaign of apartheid is astronomical. It has been a major crime against humanity which has completely stymied growth and opportunity for all Blacks in America socially, politically and economically.
The point of this article is not to dwell on events that happened in the past. It is to point out that human rights’ violations which regularly and repeatedly occurred in the past, persist in the present precisely because they have never been remediated—in the past or the present. The condition of enslavement previously described did not end in 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation ‘proclaimed’ that it should. It didn’t even end 9 April 1865 when Gen. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, formally terminating the Civil War two years later. The conditions of enslavement continued virtually unchanged for more than 100 years after the United States government announced an end to slavery via an Amendment—the XIII—making it so. Well after the Civil War, during the era of Jim Crow, Black people in the South were systematically abducted by local law officials and forced to admit to crimes they never committed so that they could be impressed into service either on local chain gangs to construct municipal infrastructure projects like draining swamps and digging ditches, or to be leased to private industrial concerns at rates well below what was found in the “legitimate(!?)” labor market to mine for coal or lay railroad track. To be sure, no incarcerated person received compensation for his/her labor (yes, women were arrested and leased out for hire, also). Those who got paid were the sheriff, the constable, the justice of the peace or some such other quasi law officials in a cartel of human trafficking. The profiteers were almost always white. The families of these entrapped, enslaved individuals could have benefited from their lost wages. This in itself is a crime against Black people, and it was committed by the police and other local law officials at a dizzying pace (Blackmon, Douglas A. 'Slavery By Another Name'). If Black people had any real grievances which might require the attention of the law (including, say, being kidnapped by local authorities and forced to work as a slave in a coal mine), what was their recourse for relief? There was none.
Romeo Slew Tybalt, Because Tybalt Slew Mercutio. Romeo Did Only What the Law Would Have Done…
An often overlooked but central provision of citizenship is to have legal recourse in the event a crime is committed against a private citizen. If the law is the entity committing the crime against the private citizen, then the private citizen has a right to redress. After 1865 Black people in this country were private citizens. Their rights as private citizens have been brazenly abrogated by other private citizens, and as well by the law itself (made up of private citizens) since 1865.
What kind of society would subject its citizens to the human rights violations of denying their citizenship (though permitting their labor to be the principal contribution to its GDP), then finally instate said citizenship, only to allow this special class of citizens to be preyed upon by fellow citizens resentful of said citizenship, all the while languishing at the mercy of ruthless agents of White Supremacy without any ombudsman, though there was a clearly established pattern of feckless and repeated abuse by the latter? The one in which we now live. Throughout United States’ history, Black people have been stalked and hunted and convicted of crimes consistently and continuously by police officer and private citizen alike (Emmett Till, Kalief Browder, Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell) irrespective of whether or not we actually committed the crime—that is if a crime was ever committed. We are the ones assumed to always be committing crimes, though in reality there is an illustrious and very clear track record centuries’ long of unadjudicated crimes having been committed against Black people. Who gives a shit if we buy sneakers and hair weave? Why aren’t white people ever stopped and questioned for crimes they have actually committed against us?
Whatever happened to the impetuous young man described at the outset who blew his fortune on loose living—choices he knowingly and willfully made--only to return home destitute and desperate? Well let’s consider the account in Luke 15 together:
11 Then he said: “A certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the part of the property that falls to my share.’ Then he divided his means of living to them. 13 Later, after not many days, the younger son gathered all things together and traveled abroad into a distant country, and there squandered his property by living a debauched life. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred throughout that country and he started to be in need. 15 He even went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to herd swine. 16 And he used to desire to be filled with the carob pods which the swine were eating, and no one would give him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many hired men of my father are abounding with bread, while I am perishing here from famine? 18 I will rise and journey to my father and say to him: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.”’ 20 So he rose and went to his father. While he was yet a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was moved with pity, and he ran and fell upon his neck and tenderly kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quick! Bring out a robe, the best one and clothe him with it, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened young bull, slaughter it and let us eat and enjoy ourselves, 24 because this my son was dead and came to life again; he was lost and was found…--(New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures)
To be very clear, Black people did not find themselves heirs to any estate inside of this country. Precious few monetary assets were ever bequeathed to us. By design our labor has been appropriated to enrich the estates of others and leave us with nothing. Again, who gives a shit if we buy sneakers and hair weave? Why haven’t any of the beneficiaries of our labor seen fit to repair us for our troubles? Are not they the ones who should be stopped and frisked and tried for their crimes? To be sure there is just about 400 years’ worth of probable cause…