“Sticks & Stones May Break Me, But Your Labels… Can Socially Kill Me!”
As you read this, I sit in prison, convicted of first degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, three counts of use of a firearm, and one count of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle. I know that’s a lot to digest. It is for me, too, still, twenty one years later. You may even hold expectations and assumptions because of those offenses. Some may even see me solely as a “convicted murderer,” “inmate,” “prisoner,” and “offender.” I am more than all that, but trust and believe I have had to bare the weight and hardships of those labels every day since and will likely throughout my life. No matter what else I do or who else I am. However, during the duration of my life the label that has caused me the most hardships has been “violent offender.”
That label, “violent offender,” has been used to deny me so much: basic human decency, equality, education, and justice in so many forms. This is because that label is today’s term, even in an era of supposed reform, used to justify virtually any mistreatment. That label has a racial and economic assumption, a visual image, that continues to dogwhistle the inequity, marginalization, and stratification I am forced to endure. In other words, because of that label I’m constantly reduced to just my crime, treated unjustly, and often completely disregarded. But how did we get to this point? Why, even in this free thinking society and a system undergoing progressive reforms, am I still perpetually reduced to the single worst moment of my life?
The answer, I believe, is labeling. Labeling is the use of names, epitaphs, and titles applied as shorthand to people, places, and things, defining them in common understanding, most often in a negative light. These negative assumptions then serve to justify the harsh treatment of a group of people, and as they become “common knowledge” baked into our culture and institutions, they become the foundation of systemic oppression. Ibram X. Kendi explains this dynamic in his great book, “Stamped From The Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” when he writes, “Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America. And this fact becomes apparent when we examine the causes behind, not the consumption of racist ideas, but the production of racists ideas.” In other words racial policies fuel racial ideas, racial ideas creates racial imagery, and racial imagery leads to labeling, which restarts the cycle again because labeling leads to the justification of racial policies. This process is the cycle of all institutions of oppression. The criminal justice system is no exception.
Labels like “violent offender” today have the same effects as labels that were first used to justify slavery. That initial sin was rationalized and condoned as an institution based upon the negative character and mental traits attributed to Africans and other indigenous people, inaccurately but impactfully linked to their physical traits. Again, in “Stamped From The Beginning,” Dr. Kendi explains that the first generation of Puritans began to rationalize slavery based upon their ideas of human hierarchy, including the belief that they were “…superior to all Native Americans, African people, and even Anglicans–that is all non-Puritans.” Thus, labeling Native Americans, African people, and Anglicans as inferior. Specifically, they were deemed intellectually inferior, incapable of higher reasoning, and prone to violence and crime. Going further, Dr.Kendi explained that the Puritans modeled the Greeks, specifically Aristotle’s theory of humanity, in which he divided humanity into two: “the master and slave.” Those basic labels justified slavery in the religion zealots’ minds, reconciling slavery with their beliefs by the use of labels.
Today mass incarceration is justified, condoned, and perpetuated using labels in the same fashion. I’m called a “violent offender” because it gives you an unfounded image of me and if you buy into that false image you treat me as such and you turn a blind eye when I’m mistreated. Worst of all, labels such as “violent offender” are used to justify and deny any real reform in regards to this criminal justice system, thus perpetuating inequality for millions of Black, Brown, and poor people.
We can take any period in the history of this criminal justice system and we will find the use of labels to justify this form of social control. But I’ll start at November 27, 1995, with John J. Dilulio’s, “The Coming of the Super Predators,” which placed this label upon a generation of young Black and Brown people. As Dr. Kendi explains, “Dilulia explained this violent surge by sensationalizing the ‘moral poverty’ of growing up ‘in abusive, violence-ridden, fatherless, Godless, and jobless settings.’ When we look ‘on the horizon,’ he said, there ‘are tens of thousands of severely morally impoverished juvenile super predators.’ Who will do what comes ‘naturally’: murder, rape, rob, assault, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, and get high.” Such racially charged ideas helped fuel laws that fostered social control ideas that helped create this mass incarceration system and most of all labeled a generation as obsolete and expendable. These labels were used to criminalize the condition of a generation. Kendi, further notes that, “He (Dilulio) did not explain this surge in violence by revealing the simultaneous surge in unemployment rates among young Black males. Nor did Dilulio explain this violent surge by revealing that drug enforcement units were disproportionately mass incarcerating young Black drug dealers….” because the goal was to label a particular demographic to justify the implementation of the most racially charged policy–I believe–in history: truth-in-sentencing.
Truth-in-sentencing was designed to attack the underprivileged. As a consequence, it crippled families, fractured communities, and above all it destroyed a generation and the generation that followed. I am of that generation!
Some of you may ask, “Did you murder someone?” and my answer will determine how you think and feel about this writing. Some of you may judge me thus. I was convicted, because I’m Black, because of my background, what the media has said about those of us in prison and many other labels. Because of those labels that foster your thoughts and feed your feelings towards crime and punishment they directly justify the creation of laws and policies such as truth-in-sentencing.
But, even with those convictions, what if I told you I never killed anyone and that I never possessed a gun? That the facts of trial reflect that point? I was convicted of first degree murder, two attempted murders, three uses of a firearm, and discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle all for being the driver of the car. I wasn’t the triggerman, it wasn’t a planned crime. I made the mistake of unwittingly driving my homeboy around while he was angry, no plan of violence in my mind. It was a senseless crime by two young fools, and it resulted in a unfortunate consequence. Now that I’m in prison and because of that label “violent offender,” I’m not judged by the actual events of my crime, nor any mention of my character. This is because labels have determined that I’m unworthy of such equality. That label “violent offender” has weighed on me throughout my incarceration, has impacted my psychology, and has hindered my quest for growth and maturation. Because of that label, “violent offender,” my rehabilitation was never a factor in this system. I wasn’t given fair opportunity to take educational, vocational, and other programs. Policy labeled me as a violent offender and as such found justification to discriminate against me. And this cycle continues.
So many of us are trapped in this situation because of blanket labels–that serve political and economic purposes–of what should really be a community social issue. A bill nicknamed the “good time bill” was recently passed as part of reform in Virginia’s special legislative session. It was written to apply to all people behind bars, specially rewarding merit by offering a fair chance to EARN earlier release to anyone willing to work hard and demonstrate true rehabilitation. It was drastically reduced and wrongfully edited to only apply to those with non-violent offenses, leaving out many of the most deserving people and running contrary to evidence. This happened primarily because the bill’s opposition–in this case Delegate Bell–read the story of one the most horrific crime he could find, using this case as brush to broadly paint all of us as that horrific crime.
This tactic is not about public safety, crime and punishment, nor is about deterring others from crime. It was labeling to justify a continuous course of inequities.
I am not my crime. I’m more than the worst moment of my life, and as a human being I should be judged by the content of my character and not the context of labels that are meant to deprive me of life, liberty, and the pursuit of be a better human being. Let us look beyond the labels and make society better based on the merits of the picture that we adhere to.
Justice
Harry A.Traynham