As I dive into our criminal (in)justice system, I am learning about the racial disparities of BIPOC – not only in arrests, pretrial processes, and convictions, but also in the severity of their sentencing – compared to their White brethren. For example, 70% of the 367 DNA exonerees to date were non-White.
When I went beyond looking at the heavily Black and Brown colors of our correctional system, I saw the horrors of what is going on behind the walls and bars of our prisons and jails. It is hauntingly familiar to the factory farm videos I watched years ago—videos that immediately turned me vegan. This led me to see that American prisons are the new factory farms.
The similarities between factory farms and prisons are many but I start here with the main 3 that I recognize. Just a head’s up, there are some slightly disturbing photos included, but I hope they help you realize the inhumanity that we are creating – and allowing – in our country.
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“…the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks. Almost every law and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the legislatures to reduce the Negroes to serfdom,—to make them the slaves of the State…”
-W. E. B. Du Bois from The Souls of Black Folk
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Check out more of Nicola Graham’s YouTube videos here!
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This post is republished on Medium.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video