Race in the Anti-Society

Race is a difficult subject for me to write about. I am a prisoner, and during the many years that I have served I have tried to live race neutral, so to speak. But race is a big factor inside: your skin colour legislates who you can talk to and where you can sit; it can protect you, or get you killed.

I was raised in Lake Forest Park, Washington state, an affluent suburb in north Seattle. The schools I attended were predominantly white. Although my father had escaped from communist Cuba, and was thus of Hispanic origin, he married my mother, a white American of many generations, and easily adapted to her American way of life.

My parents owned a small business, and our family life was more American than Hispanic. We spoke English, spent time camping and fishing, ate our evening meals together, and were entertained with American music and television. None of the American friends my sisters and I grew up with were of Hispanic extraction.

My last name is Hispanic, but this background has conditioned me to feel out of place when immersed in communities that are other than American. I am not fluent in Spanish, have little knowledge of Spanish music or culture, and I have not identified personally with issues of importance to Hispanic Americans. Indeed, before my imprisonment I naturally gravitated to those who shared the same background, and my relationships generally were with white Americans.

Taking on colour

When I was imprisoned seventeen years ago, I instantly became part of an undesirable group: society's castaways. My perceptions of what to expect had been shaped by the stereotypical images I saw depicted in popular film. In high- and medium-security prisons, I came to observe, those images were remarkably accurate. Prisons are anti-societies, dominated by those who express hatred and disdain for the values that make for a prosperous, healthy, lawful community. Life reverts to a primitive culture that respects violence and encourages prisoners to at least cultivate the perception that they have the means to employ it with lethal force if provoked.

During that initial induction period, it also became clear that differences of background, speech, or values were clearly less salient as racial or ethnic category: black, Hispanic, white. In USP Atlanta, where I was confined, most of my fellow-inmates were from the southeastern United States, a long way from my northwest Seattle home. Around 2,000 of the 2,700 prisoners were black.

"Herberto in maximum security at California Youth Authority," by Joseph Rodriguez

Many urban blacks feel as though they have suffered oppression at the expense of the white power structure for their entire lives. To some extent, many black prisoners hold whites - not their own criminal behavior or the choices they have made - accountable for their difficult status in life. Whereas whites control the world beyond prison boundaries, blacks in prison tend to view the communities inside as their own.

Their numbers cement this dominance in many aspects of penitentiary life. The common areas, the television programming, even the basketball courts in every prison yard reflect it.

There are no formal policies of segregation, but prisoners segregate themselves voluntarily. They become territorial. In the chow hall, for example, as many as 700 people congregate, with blacks sitting in one area, Hispanics in another, whites in a third. Problems erupt when prisoners cross these racial lines. The same holds true for television rooms, and for benches located in open spaces on the compound.

In such a segregated environment, the smallest event can set off a chain reaction. For example, a new black prisoner sat at a table in the white section of the chow hall. A white prisoner, with all the tact possible for such a conversation, told him that he was in the wrong section. The black responded that he was free to eat in any area he chose. The result was a smashed food tray over the black's head and a vicious fight. Administrators responded with an institution lockdown, confining all prisoners to their cells.