The Hip Hop Anthropologist

...this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice ... ...and if the system  worked for blacks equally, the Judge would have immediately set aside the verdict in the interest of justice... you simply cannot condemn a  promising young man with absolutely no previous criminal involvement to  prison for 12-years; and, brand him with a lifetime sexual predator label when he's only 20-years old! And only had a consensual, (if ill-advised) make-out session with a 17-year-old, which is the age of consent in virtually every state of the union. That white jury didn't see him as anything other than an archetypal, hypersexual beast defiling a virtuous, little, young, corn-fed, alabaster beauty. Beauty and the beast. The King  Kong metaphor played out in a cramped courtroom surrounded by flat plains filled with endless cornfields in the heart[less]land of  America... Welcome to Kansas... After all, it was the scene of the infamous Scopes "Monkey" trial back in the day. Forget Evolu

   Unfortunately, many of the reactionary, knee-jerk comments i n the NY Times piece The Scourge of Racial Bias in New York State Prisons by Michael Schwirtz, Michael Winerip and Robert Gebeloff on December 3, 2016, r eflect why radical prison reform is practically impossible in this country; especially in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential race as an administration - comprised predominantly of aggrieved white ethnics strikingly similar to the rural, isolated communities many of the guards and institutions are located - comes to national power.    Many of these same people would be outraged if the ignorant, racist guards (many who can barely read or write) treated an animal - e.g., pet, dog, cat, gerbil ex cetera - in the same despicable manner they treat these inmates (or other guards who happen to be black. Interestingly, I read no comments on systemic racism impacting black guards) with little or no oversight or accountability.    So, what these self-r