My Cordial Debate With Francis Holland On Black Male Employment vs Incarceration

From The Response To A Previous Post That Was Triggered By A Discussion Upon The "Jena 6"

Francis Holland says:

While specific legal gains were made for the Jena Six, we know that we have a national problem of systematic injustice that results in Black unemployment being twice that of whites and Black prisoners being half or more of the prison population when we are only 12.8% of the populace.

(Note - my goal is not to discredit anyone or make excessive use of mockery and slander. [Well at least not on this particular blog] Instead my goal is to engage in a structured debate about what ails us and to challenge some of the conventional wisdom that has driven us up the mountain that we have struggled to get up. Some elements of this modality simply does not work once we reach a certain plateau and WE become the managing order in the domain.)

With respect to the paragraph above which expresses the words of Mr Holland and reflects upon the strategy by which many Black people seek to FIX our community's problems (specifically Black males) I disagree with this tactic and I will conclusively detail why.

In this statement there are two key constructs:

• Injustice Rained Down Upon Black Males which channel them into the "Prison Industrial Complex"
• The question of the Employment Of Black Males in Productive Jobs

Allow me to challenge Mr Holland's reasoning.
If there was a situation where the City of Philadelphia  were to control for the "injustice" struck against Black people - would such governance against the authorities in Philadelphia keep Black males out of jail in that particular city, instead allowing them to remain on the street as upstanding and productive citizens for their communities?

Some of you may think that I am exploiting Mr Holland's words as if it is a pure serial alignment.  (ie: First we will fix the injustice and then after this oppression is gone the Black males will blossom into their natural character).   My rebuttal is that indeed this is what functionally happens BECAUSE the Black Establishment which is abundantly leftist tend to operate within the confines of their STRENGTHS.   These strengths happen to be the milieu of "struggle".  Thus they will be seen "struggling" against the injustice of the "criminal justice system".  Then they will be seen "PROTESTING" for jobs!!  

This appears rationale because, as they no doubt make note - IF these Black men are to remain out of jail they need to have productive means of expressing themselves.  They are "criminals" because all other channels for productive ends have been closed as they have been economically isolated.

In both cases we must make note that they go to the "trough" of the AUTHORITY that appears to be over them in both cases and make demands upon this force.  The "authority" that has maligned the system of justice.  The "authority" who has the resources to create jobs for the people.

My challenge to both of these perspectives upon "authority" is that - Today, more than ever this AUTHRORITY is...................YOU!  

YOU have pushed "THEY" out of office and out of the domain which you now live in your highest concentrations.   This "YOU" is not always a "racial YOU".   Instead it is more often an ideologically compatible "YOU" that was seen as worthy of your vote.   You have already purged those who are offensive to your spirit out of office where you have most control.

The City of Philadelphia (along with Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and so many others on my "Progressive Cities" list) is a symbol of the political victories that have been won via this same type of political advocacy in which the prevailing order was demanded upon.   Inserted into these offices over time were "People who care for us and have our best interests in mind".

The only problem with this entire agenda in total today is that with your favored people in power at the LOCAL level (per the previous victories), Mr Holland and others can no longer look to stand against these LOCAL AUTHORITIES to purse their grievances.  They are already "BFFs" in place and they are on the same song sheet.  Their failure to deliver is no longer down out of RACIAL and IDEOLOGICAL HATRED of Black People.    Instead their incompetence is due to LACK OF RESOURCES.  Their challenge is due to the NATIONAL misalignment of resources that has been the case since the founding of the United States.  Mind you - I am speaking in the mind of the progressive in the above paragraph.

All of this line of thinking above establishes the base logic for the Progressive-Fundamentalist.   From this he will leverage his local political power base which is now working "for" the people, speaking in their voice to lobby as a united front against the NEXT RUNG OF GOVERNMENT, demanding that they provide adequate resources.   

Thus this next rung of government is expected to use its taxing authority to act as a "resource spreader" as a means of eliminating the imbalances within its domain.   Whereas the old local establishment has moved outside of the city borders and took their resources with them - the new political establishment, though FAVORABLE to those who remain, do not have control over the MEANS OF PRODUCTION (and Finance).  The progressive seeks to counter-act the willful departure to the suburbs or rural parts of the state by engaging the state to tax and then redistribute thus "shaving the rough edges off of capitalism". 

(Note: If I have molested in any way the way that YOU ALL think - please let me know.  My goal is to model your behavior and make it more EFFECTIVE.   This is what I do with companies in my professional capacity.)

THE UNDERUTILIZED HUMAN RESOURCES LEFT BELOW

The main criticism that I have with the model of activism that has been documented above is that it primarily focuses UPWARD.  It draws upon some notion of "social justice rights" that the nation owes those at the periphery.  The rank and file will be SERVICED after a more fair system of distribution of "resources" and "justice" is apportioned. 

The human resources known as "Black males" are functionally kept out of the employment market segment where they might be EXPLOITED until there are jobs for them that are up to the standards that modern day America demands.  These jobs have a specific:

• Labor Rate
• Benefits Package
  
• Safety Standard
• Working Hours
• Environmental Standards

With these standards all impacting the bottom line of the "Consumers of Labor" in aggregate, it is incontrovertible that these attempts to improve all conditions associated with production also price certain jobs out of the market.   This is called "corporate greed" in modern parlance.  Call it that if you will.   The bottom line consequence remains:  FEWER JOBS FOR THOSE WHO NEED JOBS BUT LACK THE SKILLS TO DO SO.

I make the case, even more provocatively, that in this closed system of give and take - as the hurdles were lifted upon the "consumers of labor" the doors of the prisons were opened wider.   The proper evaluation of the COSTS of raising the standards that are enumerated above is to document the exposure that the PRISONER has to these same references.

• What is the pay rate for the Black male prisoner?
• What "Health Care Package" does he bring to his family?
• Is his "work place safety" in prison assured?  Or does the authority have to clear out the shanks that threaten him?
• Does "solitary confinement" pay overtime after an 8 hour shift?  (What about the "upline" for whom the  street corner pharmacist works for and gets his drugs?)
  
• The "Environmental Discharge" from the prison is the human time bomb that is let back into the "societal river".

You see folks - I will not win an "NAACP Image Award" for bottom lining the painful truths as I have just done.  The Progressive will always have the advantage over me because he is allowed to ADVOCATE for a better living for all without ever having to stand and account for the derivative products resulting from him "whacking a mole" who's heads has been raised on the side of the board where he is most strong.

I did not advocate for the disassembly of some of the hard fought labor protections.  I only dispassionately documented the CONSEQUENCES of some of them.  It is fully documented that "capitalism requires exploitation".   Far less articulated is the consequences from centralized social order in the name of secular progressivism.


A QUESTION OF OWNERSHIP

The same people who WORKED FOR FREE on behalf of "Barack Obama", spending endless hours and sending in their own checks to achieve and end appear to have a problem when a corporate "consumer of labor" similarly accepts mass labor and leverages it for their own purposes.   Thus I conclude that the "offense" is NOT that one does not get "paid" for their labors.  The problem is that in the normal "labor vs ownership" model - the OWNER retains too much of the benefit from the labor.

If the corporate model is so repugnant to so many of you - Where are the modern day "Marcus Garvey's"?  During the height of the "American Apartheid" system Garvey did so, leveraging our right to assemble for our private interests all without seeking to take over the government with quasi-socialist ends.  The "ownership" question was settled because the collective benefited from the effort.  

Indeed it was "injustice" that doomed Mr Garvey's efforts (in addition to shoddy accounting practices).  Unlike the movement behind Barack Obama - Mr Garvey's effort was "non-governmental" in nature and instead based upon jobs, pride and community development.  This was the last great "organic" development effort in Black America.   Mr Garvey did not receive one dime in "federal income redistribution" to move forward.  At a time when the notion of "redlining" was defined - he succeed because the people who the banks receive their funds from via checking and savings accounts - put their money DIRECTLY into his effort and not the bank.

In summary being "anti-corporate" and pro-government jobs has failed in the past and will fail again.  The exploding national debt that such a play will run up is going to one day force you to develop a more LOCALIZED plan once the nation goes insolvent after decades of being all things to all people.

One day the Black community will either benefit from the choice of having developed a more effective local, distributed means of labor demand and "law and order" OR it will realize that it should have done so once the central government that we turned to for such services implodes.  At that point in time in the future we will see that the 'centralized government SERVICE' model was just as much of a period of LOST TIME as SLAVERY was.  Both similarly hijacked our "Self Determination", proving to be a set back to the development of the necessary human resource management systems necessary to achieve a certain end.