Where’s All My Caucasian Brothers?
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Life Lessons, Culture, Prison, Incarceration, Education

Where’s All My Caucasian Brothers?

Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels

It was a glorious fall day on Rikers Island. After being cooped up and kept inside without a ray of sunshine for almost a year at MCC federal prison in Downtown Manhattan, I found myself transferred to the city jail on Rikers Island.

And when on my very first day after reassignment, the officer yelled “yard,” I jumped out of my bunk and ran to the front of the unit. He could just as well have yelled “pussy” and I don’t think I’d have been any more excited. I was going out to feel some sunshine on my face. After a year inside, I could see my fingernails getting cloudy. And I knew it was from lack of sunlight. I wanted some!

Most of the inmates in my interim unit at Rikers had just come off the street and thus, were not starved for fresh air and sunlight like I was. As a result, I was the only prisoner who wanted out at that early morning hour. Most guys were lying in their bunks and not inclined to move.

The officer who escorted me (and only me) to the yard was a friendly Caribbean man probably about 30 years old. He wore dreds and a smile — and was vocal as we strode the several hundred yards to join about 100 other inmates from other units before we were searched and dispatched outside.

The yard was really 2.25 acres of patchy grass and a fucked up basketball court with a bent rim. But it was paradise as far as I was concerned. Ringing the grassy area was a muddy circular track guys walked around while rapping with their homies.

Toward the middle of the circle stood my escort, whose job it was to simply watch inmates in case something jumped off (which it didn’t). The demographics of the 100 or so inmates who chose to go to rec on this cold day was decidedly homogeneous. Which is to say, they were all men of color (black and/or Hispanic) save just one other white boy.

After a few laps around the track, I came near my officer/escort, looked his way, and asked “yo, officer. Where all my caucasian brothers?” He smiled a big smile and let out a hearty laugh. I continued: “We don’t commit crimes. Or maybe we just don’t get arrested?” I mused.

“I don’t know, my man. It is what it is. What can I say?” he philosophized.

Rewind a year and a half and my first experience with incarceration was at the Tombs in Lower Manhattan, where I was placed in a 46 inmate unit, 8 South to be precise. Funny thing about the demographic in that jail and unit as well. Again, me and one other white boy.

That is for a couple of days before Charlie had a major meltdown and called the officer a spic, and several inmates niggers and faggots. He was escorted from the unit and placed elsewhere to save his life, and I became the only white boy in 8 South.

Charlie’s racist tirade was a source of utter embarrassment for me. I’d actually befriended the guy and went to the officer to ask if he wanted to enlist my aid in calming Charlie down (Charlie was locked in his cell as several inmates taunted him as if he was a caged animal).

However the totally embarrassing episode went down, a couple of the other prisoners approached me to explain that just because Charlie was an asshole, that didn’t mean I was, too. Luckily, I experienced little to no discrimination as a result of Charlie’s explosion.

I’m happy to say that wherever I was during my grand tour of three different penal institutions, overt racism was not in clear evidence. Yes, certain jobs went to certain racial groups according to which officer was running the program. And the expressions “white boy” and “nigger” were all too common.

But those are just words. Attitudes and actions are what really matters. And mostly, we were all prisoners. Whether we were black, white, yellow, or any color in between was secondary. It’s just that the great majority were not white — and way out of proportion compared to the general population of the USA. That’s all I’m sayin’.