In light of Dr. Ben Carson’s recent remarks on prison, prisoners, and homosexuality I feel it is my duty to set the record straight on this issue. It’s getting on my nerves. This is a convicts response to Dr. Ben Carson.
Who am I? I am Fridge from Short North. I’ve been in prison since July 17, 1994. Done time all over this nation, having been flipped between state and federal prison. My story is somewhere online, rappers lie about being what my men and I are and the sacrifices made in the name of the game.
Dr. Ben Carson is a most brilliant surgeon according to legend. Saw his Lifetime movie. Might be the first time in television history that the real life protagonist is more handsome than the “star” tapped to portray him.
The good Doctor may be qualified to speak on the hemispheres of the brain, but, having never done a day of hard time he is way out of line to disrespect me or any other man who’s religion is good old fashioned manhood.
But first his hood-pass needs to be checked. In the Lifetime movie and his Jet Magazine profile I remember it mentioning the good Doctor being from the projects. In his pursuits I believe the good Doctor overlooked one thing.
Double Dutch….in the hood
In the projects we watch our children closely. The boys play this, the girls play that. Occasionally they play together. Whenever the girls are short a person and want to play double dutch they might ask a boy to turn the rope for them. This is usually short lived because turning double dutch is a skill. Takes boys longer to learn so they are usually of no use. The girls will cruelly drive him away. And by cruel, I mean violence.
Then it happens.
You start to notice the little girls begin to seek out one boy in particular. This little boy knows how to turn the rope exactly like the girls. On the rare occasion a young boy will simply have the rhythm to turn the rope but he will not be as vested as this young boy I’m referring to. So the girls won’t seek him just to hang out when double-dutch is not in session. This young boy is a little sweet. More than likely he was oversensitive as a baby. He showed signs that made the men look at him funny. But not a word is uttered about it. No one wants to “jinx” it.
One day you look at this little boy and notice that he’s hanging with the girls more and more, usually around age eight. He smacks when he talks around the girls. It slips from time to time around the family. Not a word is spoken. As a brother or uncle you test him. “Man, you like Tracy?” “Naw, she just my friend…” Not a word is spoken.
The other boys will play with the girls in hopes to steal a kiss or more. Some play with the girls to soften their stance a little because lil’ black girls usually start off stronger than the boys and are more aggressive in some cases. The roles reverse around age eleven. But not for him. He becomes noticeably different. He is cool but naturally troubled. He carries a burden that he simply does not understand at such a young age. He feels what is being thought and never said. He struggles to find others like himself. We love him. But there is a disconnect. How could a man from the Brewster Projects not see or know this common black scenario? It is rare. But not that rare.
We as black people need to stop allowing the media to use us as the whipping post for gay rights as if we the former and current slaves (Under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) of this nation are its true bigots!
Moving on….
“Because a lot of people go into prison straight and when they come out, they’re gay. So did something happen while they were in there?” Ben Carson
A: sometimes.
Contrary to pop-culture and it’s similitude’s, in here, rape and homosexuality are frowned upon. We in the hoods of America have been on a four hundred year quest to discover what it really means to be a man in a society that hunts you constantly. A society that vibrates against the rhythm or your soul. A society that took all you were and all you ever believed in and left you with nothing but darkness and confusion. So we make some shit up, see how it fits.
We try to conform. Never really happy though because something is missing. The puzzle never really connects. Crime becomes an option. Then it is embraced. Once inside the duties of a man are revealed. By then it is usually too late because the game is a Roach Motel situation. Second part, the rules of manhood are bent to fit into an unnatural habitat. It’s more savage. You have to finish the plate.
All things wrong with us as “black” men are rooted in slavery. We must stop allowing people to push us away from this fact because of their guilt. No one dares tell the Jew to forgive the Nazi party. No one tells the raped to allow the rapist to erase the incident. No, he must register for life.
That said we create rules. We don’t snitch because the judges are usually white; the same whites that pass down bogus justice on us then, do it now. Once inside we don’t bow-down which means no homosexual acts. It’s “what the white man has always wanted.” As told to me and every-other black convict. The goal of slavery was 1. Economics, 2. The destruction of the black man for a number of reasons. One being a preemptive measure, chattel slavery and the methods of rape, murder, sodomy, castration, dismemberment, and lynching, just to name a few is certainly cause for revenge. Many times, a dark secret, of master raped the young men, otherwise known as “taking their manhood.” So see, we don’t start these fires, we simply must answer for them. A slave’s burden.
This is why I hate this topic so much.
In prison, to insure there is no misunderstanding of one’s role as a man we have set-rules about homosexual activity that have been in place for decades. I didn’t write them, I simply abide. –
“Don’t matter if you pitchin’
or catchin’, you still playin’
ball so stay off the field!” or
“Once the seal is broken, there is no return.” —Nasty Melvin from Washington D.C.
“I don’t have enough time to fuck another man, and I got a life bid!” –My mentor and brother Dr. Guy T. Fisher
The difference between our dogma and Dr. Carson’s is that our concepts are not rooted in absolute truth and we know it. The good Doctor on the other hand has not done a single day of rock pounding so he has no clue as to what he is talking about when it comes to prisoners and the sexual culture that accompanies it. Nor does he have any knowledge of nature vs. existentialism. I have a program designed for saving the “black” man -I teach in prison and will continue teaching on the streets upon release. In booklet number 4 I discussed my late Uncle Dookie from Baltimore. Uncle Dookie was gay in the 1930’s. Can you imagine how hard that was? It was not a matter of him courting attention! It was his nature.
My beloved Grandfather (may they both rest in peace) tried to remove him from the family’s history. I happened upon Uncle Dookie’s image in an old photo album. My Grandmother told me about him. Pa-Pa wouldn’t speak his name.