As an ethnic “minority” I have every reason to be angry with white America. When a country like ours expresses such heroic and redemptive values but in practice covertly implements mechanisms of injustice, how can I not be furious?
What a paradox! We boast on having attained the universal value of freedom, yet we lead the world in the mass incarceration of over 2,266,800 people; 60% being non-violent offenders (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics) and 60% people of color (American Progress). What a contradiction! We claim that all human beings are created equal, yet in the name of national security we have unequally deported over 350,000 persons, mostly Hispanic, with no history or connection to “terrorists” (ICE). Many of these were torn apart from family, forced back to the extreme conditions of gang-infested and cartel-run cities that cater to the all-American demand for drugs, which they sought to escape in order to attain the promise of the American Dream which ultimately turned out to be the American Nightmare. What a historic tragedy! We brag about progress and economic eminence over the world, yet it was estimated that nearly 50 million Americans, over 16% of the population, were struggling to survive financially in 2012 (Census Bureau). The harsh reality is that this percentage is made up of ethnic minorities who are now losing hope and are settling with a lifestyle of survival in neighborhoods we have abandoned and forgotten. Upon this we are willing to spend $68 billion a year to expand our prison infrastructure (CNN); we’re ready to increase our budget for border reinforcement beyond $11.8 billion from the $5.9 billion in 2003; and I find it hopelessly overwhelming that white families, on average, earn about $2 for every $1 that black and Hispanic families earn, while the net-worth of white families is six times higher than families of color (NY Times).
If you are angry, I have even more of a reason to be angry. My parents migrated to the U.S. out of desperation: my father from Mexico’s collapsing economy due to U.S. economic manipulation, and my mother from the rising civil war in El Salvador due to U.S. military instigation. Growing up, it was hard to hear that my parents were ”illegal.” And the way that the police monitored our neighborhood seemed to overcome my denial and lead me to the conclusion that I was probably among the “criminal.” I watched my father get deported when I was 8 and my mother lived in fear thereafter while working two jobs to make ends meet. All of their hopes and dreams, as well as mine, evaporated and I gave in to the prophecy of statistics: I was the perfect candidate for social failure. I dropped out of high school, became a gang-member, and after graduating from the streets, I landed a “full-ride enrollment” into the California prison system with an 8 year sentence to a high security prison (ultimately completing 5 years therein) and having to fully accept that this was reality; that I was a part of a societal system that speaks great and lofty things about freedom and equality, but none of these things applied to me because I was not white. I was rather among the marginalized, the illegal, the savage, and the profane, who are destined to abandonment and isolation from the “happiness” of the American progress. I was separated from my loved ones and placed in belly of Leviathan, where men are brutally assaulted, where vulnerable men are raped and pimped by other men, where riots are sure to erupt at any moment and cost many their lives, and where racism is so concentrated that men, such as my friend George, get their throats fatally sliced for befriending others of a different ethnicity. I have more reason than you to be angry at white people… but God is a comedian of sorts: he has a sense of humor.
After years of being incarcerated, the time came for me to be transferred to another prison. I had given my life to Christ, left the gang. And though I had experienced a radical transformation in my encounter of the crucified God and developed strong multi-ethnic relationships, I nevertheless continued to wrestle with my own prejudices. I remember arriving to the new facility and being asked by the officer what gang I was associated with. In prison you are segregated by ethnicity, and if you are Latino, you are furthermore segregated by region because of the many Latino gangs.
“I am Latino from Fresno,” I replied.
“So are you a Norteno or Bulldog?” He asked, naming the two north-regional California gangs. And though I was formerly a Bulldog, I answered boldy, “Neither. I am a follower of Christ!”
The officer mockingly laughed and moved me down the assembly line of inmates who were waiting on their destinations.
I was celled (roomed) up with a “paisa,” one who is part of the undocumented Mexican group. It went well until about a week later when officers stormed my cell and dragged both if us out. I was stripped naked in the middle of the cellblock and interrogated about my true gang identity. Apparently, because I never dropped out on institutional records, I was still a Bulldog gang-member to them and was suspected of being a “torpedo” (a secret agent for gangs) because I had supposedly lied about my gang affiliation, celled with an inmate of another association, and I had covered my old tattoos with the latest sleeve of tattoos that I now have. They believed I was moving in secret against an enemy. As for my explanations, they weren’t buying it. They were useless and without any hearing so I was thrown into “the hole,” that is, Solitary Confinement, for 30 days.
So here I was in the big, bad hole with nothing but an old, worn out underwear and a t-shirt which was probably used by 101 inmates. No blankets, no pillow, no socks, and absolutely no property. I only had the pair of rags to cover up my nakedness and the grey 8-by-6 concrete room I called my cell. It had one strip of a window but was covered from the outside with some type of dark tape in order to block the light. Though the cell had on its ceiling a nightlight, it was nevertheless dark, and for some reason the cold was even colder. I had nothing but anxiety to warm myself up with while the random cries and sudden screams, often filled with the curses of suffering men, were my only mental stimulus. It was like all sources of positive energy, light, warmth, human interaction, were gone. All of it was beyond proximity and I was abandoned, even isolated, to the depths of the worst punishment possible- absolute abandonment and separation from community.
A day went by, then a couple more, and before you know it, I wasn’t sure if I was ever getting out. Anxiety got the best of me and I began to pace back and forth in my cell in panic wondering if my loved ones would die while I was lost in isolation; or if the police would eventually discover some of the unresolved crimes I had committed so that I would really have to spend the rest of my life here. What about the time that I partook in that horrible incident, where the fullness of my depravity and confused humanity was revealed? Remember? You deserve to be in this horrible place! In fact, you should be forgotten here. Forgotten? What if the officers forget about me here? How long do they usually hold people here? God, please get me out of here! I know I have done a lot of evil, but it wasn’t completely my fault that I grew up this way… I mean, the way the system was set up; the place in which I was raised; the poverty, the violence, the pain! But it was my fault for I chose to commit what I had committed. And on and on my mind spun to the point that my cognition would get lost and transcend the mind and overcome my physical awareness as I caught myself in conversation and argument with myself, becoming confused not realizing where I was or what time it was or whether I was living in my mind or not as I bumped into the walls. And as I looked at my feet I became aware that I was in a cell, pacing back and forth, following a streak of dry weathered concrete and realizing that the previous hundred inmates or so also paced in this very cell as they strove to free themselves from the captivity of a broken mind that lost connection with the real world! I was so disconnected. I became an animal with a full beard, a smelly presence, and I had forgotten what it was like to be human. When food would be served through the little slot on the door, I would hunch and wait for the slot to open so I could immediately grab my food for I learned from a previous time that I only had two seconds to grab it, otherwise hunger would be added to the absence of all things good.
I cried. My emotional pain was starting to transform into physical pain. My anxiety was eating my stomach. I don’t know if that is possible, but I could swear to you that I teleported myself into my body and saw it myself, having developed those powers from living in my mind. I traveled deeper and deeper, and the deeper that I traveled, the emptier I felt. Had God abandoned me? Had he, like the system, discarded me as useless social rubble into the depths of hell? I looked at the wall, which I had vandalized when I found a small piece of lead, and saw a whole diagram which explained probably every dynamic of the American system and its injustice. There was no hope at all, not on that wall nor in the depths of my being, but I remembered a Bible verse that states “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). Is God really with me? I found it hard to believe but the sound of it was easy for me to receive. I grabbed that piece of lead again and in order to keep hope alive in such a hopeless place, I wrote on the wall and pressed the lead against it until it all disintegrated into letters that spelled out “God is with you.”
One day, my strange wanderings in the labyrinth of my mind was interrupted by a thump on the wall. I wanted to call out to my neighbor so bad, but I was a Christian. I had no place connecting with men from other prison gangs. What if he was black, what if he was a Bulldog, or what if he was white? The prison rules do not allow for cross-cultural interaction. But who said we couldn’t communicate phonically by knocking on walls? So I pounded back and waited for a second… and the thud was returned! I jumped in my mind in full excitement! I got a response! This was amazing! It was so revolutionary to hear another human being intentionally respond to my thud against the wall! I pounded again, this time sounding the rhythm of a commonly known melody but without completing it. I waited… and what do you know, my neighbor completed the remaining sounds!
“Hello! Hello?” I cried, “are you there?” And in a muffled voice my neighbor responded, “Yes! I’m here. Have you lost your mind yet, neighbor?”
“I am getting there.” I replied.
“You want something to read?” he asked.
Something to read? Something to read? I am dying inside my brain, literally, and you ask me if I want something to read? “Yeah, that would be cool,” I answered, trying to hide my excitement.
A few minutes went by and he shot his “fishline,” lead by a bar of soap, underneath my cell door. A fishline is usually made by pulling a string from the underwear and manually manufacturing thin rope out of it, then it is tied to a small piece of a bar of soap which operates as a hook. I grabbed the soap and wheeled into my cell a couple of workout magazines. I read them all with no regrets.
My relationship with “Neighbor” extended for quite a few days but it was limited to borrowing his books and sometimes giving him my dessert for his benevolence. My favorite interaction with him was playing chess. We would both draw a chessboard on the floor with each square marked by a code, such as A1 or B4, and we would call out loud the square to which we moved our toilet-paper-made chess pieces. I could never beat Neighbor; no matter how hard I tried.
What was Neighbor? Was he from a gang, was he black, or was he white? I liked thinking of him as being Middle-Eastern because that would make sense considering his hospitality.
Then the day came… showers! Finally. The officers cuffed me through the door slot and then after opening my cell door, I was escorted to a phone-booth-like cage which had a shower head in it. There were two cages but I wasn’t sure if for security reasons they only make one available. But then I heard a cell door shut and the sound of keys drawing nearer. From the corner I saw the two officers escorting a tall and physically built guy. He was white with a shaved head, probably in his mid 30′s and his body was covered in tattoos of swastikas and thunderbolts, confederate flags and “white pride.” The most disturbing tattoo was on his neck. It read “F**k Niggers.” I didn’t even look at him.
“You must be Paz-02,” he said, having probably known my name from the officers’ calls. “Hi, I’m Matt, your neighbor.”
I looked at him. My neighbor’s name was Matt and he was engaging me.
“Yes, I’m Paz. Nice to meet you, Matt.” I responded. He inserted two fingers through the small cage holes as if to shake my hand. I hesitantly put forth my two fingers and shook his.
I was astounded. Here we were, two men in the middle of the cellblock, in a place where racism reigns and the rules of the game are “no cross-race/ethnic/cultural/gang interaction.” Now I don’t know if Matt was Christian or not, usually Christian inmates are very bold about their faith; but what I do know is that both he and I, two completely antithetical type of criminals, were taken from an environment of concentrated racism and were relocated to a place of utter abandonment, of complete marginalization, of total isolation, where human interaction was not just something desired but something absolutely needed. Something that one would probably trade everything for. And here, in this desperately dark, cold, and lonely place, none of that mattered anymore. I had a friend - a friend who, though perhaps may have been at enmity with me in general population (ordinary facilities), was relinquishing bad influences because he, as well as I, discovered that friendship and interaction was worth risking our lives for. That skinhead, my neighbor, that inmate named Matt, who stood as a symbol of racism had dismantled my prejudices and had become my friend in the dark place of incomprehensible rejection where I felt inspired even more to someday come against systemic injustice not fueled by anger, unforgiveness, or a noble desire for equality, but to fulfill that deep and powerful design of fellowship and community we were made for yet we take for granted.
This kind of reconciliation which remains contradictory to the world is the primary agent of redemption found in the deep connection encountered at the altar of human interaction. An altar, I say, in which one must sacrifice and relinquish all prejudices and anger in order to embrace the peace that God has been pursuing all along. Isolation is definitely the worst punishment any human being can ever encounter but intentional community is a necessity of the human soul which can reinforce the strength to suffer even through the most intense situations. I had every reason to be angry, but this experience in solitary confinement changed my trajectory so that my pursuit for justice is now driven by the desire to attain that redemptive form of community rather than by passionate anger. I have tasted reconciliation and have realized the need for community in the place of abandonment, and I tell you… I am not after a fight, I am after your friendship. I invite the world into the fellowship of our cellblock.
Ivan Paz is the co-director of The Pink House, a year-long Urban Project with the Fresno Institute for Urban Leadership. This blog entry was originally posted at pazindacity.wordpress.com.
