Remember when Chuck D called rap music Black America’s CNN? Today I find myself lamenting the demise of both rap music and CNN. Much like Captain Ahab, I am elusively seeking a contemporary anthem that speaks to the current movement to dismantle the prison industrial complex.  Since this does not seem to be materializing, I am reflecting on some of my favorite rap songs from the past to glean what I can about prisons and reform instead.

This brings me to the song “I” from Public Enemy’s 1999 album “There’s A Poison Goin On.”  If you have never listened to the entire song, you are missing out.  I am assuming that it can be downloaded (I still operate with CDs so I am dating myself).  Here are some of the lyrics that I wanted to highlight:

Walkin On Broken Bottles & Potato Chip Bags
Everyone I See Got The Nerve To Brag
Where They From What They Got
And Don’t Own Squat
Disrespect Where They From And Ya Might Get Shot
Zombies Askin Me What The Latest Bomb Be
Should Shot The Fuckin Sheriff & The Fuckin Deputy
For Ok In The Drug Trade And Lettin It Be
But I Know Prison For Me Is An Industry
So I Walk

As early as 1999, Chuck D master lyricist and hip hop philosopher was already pointing to the profit-making angle of prisons.  What he prophetic?  No, it’s just that others were behind the curve in calling out Bill Clinton for expanding the reach of the PIC like none of his predecessors had before him.  Friends and colleagues often ask me why I have such antipathy for Bill Clinton.  I look at them like they have LOST their minds. Clinton is the president who accelerated the dismantling of the social safety net with his war on poor people and in particular poor women of color through the passage of his horrible welfare “reform” bill.  Those who were not of age during that time may not know the history of this assault on poor people.  I, however, have not forgotten.  I also clearly remember the principled resignation of Peter Edelman over Clinton’s signing of that law.  [ An aside: Why don’t public officials resign in protest anymore?]  I won’t even speak of the exponential growth of the prison industrial complex under Clinton’s watch and by his design. [It looks like I am speaking about it after all.]   People of color in particular who lionize Clinton are suffering from an acute case of false consciousness. Chuck D’s portrait of urban despair and decay in “I” is a direct result of Clinton’s policies (in addition to Bush I and Reagan).

I Heard The Best Things In Life Be Free
Didn’t God Make The Land The Air We Breathe
Not For The Homeless Don’t Give A Damn About Me
In The Mirror Somebody Else Is Starin At Me
Maybe Prison Is The Skin I’m Within
All This Time I Been Sufferin Can’t Fix It Wit A Bufferin
Plus They Said I’ll Never Work In This Town Again
Damn So I Keep On Walkin

“Maybe prison is the skin I’m within.”  It’s worth lingering over these words.  This lyric has so much resonance for the young people that I work with today.  What does it mean that prison is the skin that so many Americans live in?  The injustice of this reality cannot be overstated.  Prison has become inscribed as the identity of too many Americans (particularly poor ones and racial minorities).  The social problems that this engenders are ones that we have only just begun to recognize and have not yet properly analyzed.

Lil Day Day Is Big Day And Just Did Time
Seen Him Standin On The Unemployment Line
Which Collided Wit The Line Of The Health Clinic
I Seen Crazy Stacy Her Ass Standin Up In It
No More Welfare Cut Her Medicaid
Damn My Mama Used To Do Her Braids
I Keep Walkin So They Don’t See Me
But I Doubt If They Doin Any Better Than Me
So I Walk On Never Take The Planet For Granted
I Paved The Concrete, Asphalt & Granite

Deindustrialization and our current Great Recession have exposed the structural flaw in the American capitalist system.  Manufacturing jobs are gone.  Low-skilled labor is concentrated in the service industries.  Those industries focus on hiring young women and discriminate against young men (in particular those who are of color).  William Julius Wilson, a sociologist at Harvard University, makes the case that employers in the service industries prefer to hire women and white men to present as the face of their companies.  Young black and brown men are discriminated against and find that economic opportunities are shut off to them.  Chuck D speaks to this reality in 1999 and points out how the social safety net has been pulled from vulnerable and needy populations.   What happens to young people abandoned to the wolves in such a way?  How can they survive this war on their lives?  We find the answer in the final words of “I”:

I Walk Past 3 Brothers Sittin On The Porch
Wit A Yard Of Dirt And Littered Wit Newports
Talkin How They Comin Up While They Sittin On Their Ass
As I Walk Past Em I’m A Target Of Their Laughs
And One Said Lets Get Em For His Fuckin Stash
As I Walked Fast Past The Other Yards Wit Grass
Had A Lil Cash Tried To Make It Last
From A Few Deals I Made From Cleanin Windshields
I Ran Like A Rally They Caught Me In An Alley
Can’t Get Out The Ghetto From New York To Cali
I Thought I Had Nuthin Till I Felt The Knife
And Now I Ain’t Even Got A Life

The key to addressing the problem that leads to the criminalization of large numbers of Americans depends on how you answer the following question: “Why Were the 3 Brothers Sittin on the Porch?”

You can read all of the lyrics to the song here.