Slaves Were Sold After Bankruptcy

The Trumps, two missing.

What is blue collar crime? Or is it white collar? Red, purple, colour is immaterial. Crime doesn’t pay.

We know about lynching. Nina Simone recorded a song about strange fruit on a tree. We know about slave babies taken away from their mothers as soon as they were born, men with scars like roots on their backs and whole families sold after masters went bankrupt. But, there’s not much written about slaves that committed suicide, rather than be in chains.

I’m reading a book set in Natchez Mississippi. Eboli, a slave, put rocks in his pockets and went swimming. He committed suicide because he did not want to be a mule anymore. Prison is doing time, lock down but which ever way you put it, it’s slavery. Inmates either committed a crime or were wrongly accused, which was common in the South.

Problem with being young is dabbling in experiments. They call it the folly of youth. Some end up in initiation schools called prisons. Parents warn kids about putting rocks in their pockets when they go swimming. Kids don’t listen because acceptance by the age group is more important than parents’ advice.

In God of Gamblers, the 1989 Hong Kong classic, actor Chow Yun-Fat the lead character, tells his gambling opponent that he’ll go to prison and become someone’s girlfriend. Peer pressure does not talk about such rocks. Racist policing and holes in the justice system also contribute to the large numbers of slaves’ grand kids in prisons, but putting rocks in one’s pockets while swimming, is an individual choice. Crime’s not cool.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.