By Vincent L. Hall
CNN – “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks reparations are not a good idea, claiming “it would be pretty hard to figure out who to compensate,” and claims “none of us currently living are responsible” for what happened 150 years ago. McConnell believes America made up for slavery by electing Barack Obama, and passing civil rights legislation.”
If Mitch McConnell had grown up in my hood, he would have suffered all types of verbal assaults and abuse. He looks like a cross between Jiminy Cricket, a leprechaun and the lead Munchkin in The Wizard of OZ. Mitch would have been tagged for being four-eyed like all of us who wore glasses. He is the Pictionary representation of a weak and wilting wimp.
Mitch has no idea how difficult it is being Black. He can’t imagine how it feels to be the scourge of the nation according to Whites. He has no clue how much self-loathing Africans Americans live with. The self-hatred is not a genetic defect; it comes from the systematic and institutional raping we endured under chattel slavery. America could easily adopt a tag-line similar to GE; “We didn’t invent slavery, we just made it better.”
America’s system was by far the most brutal; mind, body and spirit. But even after it was outlawed, this nation continued practicing various forms of slavery, like convict leasing and mass incarceration. In the words of Johnny Guitar Watson; “Ain’t that a Bitch.” Rich White men made money off of our work in slavery and today they provide jobs for their children by locking us up. Quit Playin’, America doesn’t lead the world in inmates for no reason.
In February of this year, The Global Research laid it out in a story entitled, “The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?” “There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, ‘no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.’”
The United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990, it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.
“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The prison-industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street.” And that doesn’t even take into account the million-plus jobs created for local, state and federal employees.
From bail bonds to jail commissary and telephone contracts, it’s a racket! Senator Mitch McConnell is the last of the pre-Trump, Conservative Republicans. They are generally as racist that Trump could ever be. Once you look past Mitch’s well-dressed, socially refined, pseudo-statesmen posturing, you realize the he is as vile as Trump. McConnell and other “respectable” GOP members are beneficiaries of an old-school cultural circumcision that was once a prerequisite for the U.S. Senate. The “socially circumcised” are good at the social graces but lacking in grace for anyone who is not their color and their kind. They mutter about the rule of law, but they violate the letter and the spirit of the Constitution at will. Ask Judge Merrick Garland, whose nomination for the SCOTUS never saw the rightful light of day.
Mitch is the living example of why America owes us reparations. He lives and flourishes on the fat of the shackled masses that “arrived” here 400 years ago. The inference that giving us a “Nigger President” should suffice as recompense shows that Mitch is ignorant and ill-suited for the job of Speaker. Mitch can click his red heels and go straight to hell for my portion.
