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THE BLACK FAMILY AND THE PRISONS
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by JOHNNY SPAIN


IN A CLASS society the basic integer in identification of class association does not descend below the family unit to the individual. An individual in a class society is born into the family's social class and does not, as is often erroneously assumed, have congenital importance at birth as an individual unless, of course, born into a family that has social standing within the "upper class."

For example, if a child is born in Harlem or Watts (hence black, poor, or both), this child is socially unimportant via the fact that Harlem/Watts as a social class--the base class--is inconsequential in Ameriklan society. Let us say, on the other hand, that a child is born in Beverly Hills or the White House (hence, rich and white). This child is no different, by nature, than the child born in Harlem/Watts (and surely the former is no "better"); but as a matter of social standing in the class society, the child born in Beverly Hills or the White House would automatically gain social importance by way of the family's placement on the social ladder of wealth. 

The Primary point is this: in this society--a class society--the family is the first unit of measurement or classification and therefore, the family unit is very important. Now in any practical attempt at analyzing the black family in its present structure, we must consider the historical aspects which have forged the temperament of the black family into its present state. Let me quote here, and we shall analyze, what is to my knowledge that most descriptive summary of the historical perspective of the black family:
...The black family unit is in ruins. It is our first and basic weakness. This fact may contribute much to our difficulty in uniting as a people...To say that the black family unit is slowly eroding because of pressures from without (poverty and social injustice) and from within (negative response to crisis situation) is to completely mistake the depth of the issue. There are three historical facts that have produced the present state of chaos on the family level of our black society. First, the family unit was destroyed during chattel slavery. Men had the sense of family responsibility trained out of them. Second, our culture, institutions, and customs, upon which unity depends and without which cohesiveness can never exist, were destroyed and never replaced. The best we could do (as black people) was ape the ofay, and cling to a kind of subculture that manifests itself today in the hideous notion that if we educate ourselves properly, think the right thoughts, read the right books, say the right things, and do exactly that which is expected of us--we can then be as good as white people [my italics]. Third, our change in status from an article of movable property to untrained misfits on the labor market was not as most think a change to freedom from slavery but merely to a different kind of slavery¹

These three "historical factors" must be examined further before any real insight into the present state of the black family can be obtained. 

"The family unit was destroyed by chattel slavery." The slave masters during the gyve era were concerned a great deal with even any two slaves having a relationship where unity might have prevailed. The slave master in the gyve era did not allow a "black family" to exist. 


ANGELA DAVIS, speaking on the female during the gyve era said:

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JOHNNY SPAIN, a member of the Black Panther Party, is one of six prisoners known as the San Quentin Six accused of murder of three guards and two inmates in an alleged escape attempt on August 21, 1971, in which George Jackson was killed. The other five prisoners are Fleeta Drumgo, Willie Tate, Hugo Pinell, David Johnson and Luis Talamantez. Spain's philosophy is one of uncompromising resistance. As he says, so long as society "permits any man to be locked behind walls and bars for unjustified reasons, that man will resist; first against the imprisonment, and then against the social order which created the imprisonment, and then against the society." More information on the San Quentin Six can be obtained from The Prison Solidarity Committee, P.O. Box 40070, San Francisco, CA. 94110.



In the most fundamental sense, the slave system did not-and could not-engender and recognize a matriarchal family structure. Inherent in the very concept of the matriarchy is "power."²

This holds as equally true for the male. The slave master could not, under any circumstances, allow any form of "power" to rise within the slave system. Where unity existed among the slaves there was present a tremendous threat to the entire slave foundation: 

The American brand of slavery strove toward a rigidified disorganization in family life, just as it had to proscribe all potentioal social structure within which black people might forge a collective and conscious existence.³

Every conceivable method, no matter how ruthlessly savage was utilized to keep black family unity from emerging, which in effect, created psychological instabilities, insecurities, within black people, that still exist over 400 years later, today. 

"Our culture, institutions and customs ... were destroyed ..." Our wavering relationship was accompanied by the exploitative economic relationship between the slave and slave master. There were no factories or industry, no progressive programs that were compatible to black peoples' economic need; a dependency was developed by black for white leniency. There were no schools that might have served blacks to rise above the wretched condition forced upon them by whites. In short: white supremacy would not permit black people to move up the economic ladder of capitalism. This is true today, but especially so during the gyve era when black people still had the visible marks of fetters on their wrists and ankles.

Slavery did not allow for a slave to own property, for the slave himself was considered the property of the slave master. The slave would reason that if he could own property without having god strike him down, why not own himself? This deduction by the slave would be answered with justified insurgence.


AS SOON AS IT was no longer beneficial for the slave masters to maintain the fetters, they were taken off of black people and replaced by the chains of the Ameriklan Dream, a proliferating capitalism that uses black labor as the very foundation of Amerikla. But before the overt gyve was removed, black people had undergone the transformation from a natural populace of African people, to a creation, an animated facsimile of the totally abject:

"For the subject people," Jean-Paul Sartre says of the Colonialized, "this inevitably means the extinction of their national character, culture, customers, (and) sometimes even language. They live in their underworld of misery like dark phantoms ceaselessly reminded of their subhumanity".⁴

"Our change in status..." from the gyve to the wage. As Ameriklan capitalism developed, as the industrial fields became more competitive, black people--unskilled and uneducated--were without competitive chance. 

When we scrutinize the subject with a desire to find the truth, we must at once ask ourselves:

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