This morning I had a long conversation with a young man who has been a white supremacist gang member since 1999. I’ll call him” S.”
S shaves his head and has a goatee. Demonic tattoos cover his wiry body, from his wrists to his neck, and his teeth have the rotting appearance of a meth addict. He boasts that he is a ranking member of a prison-based gang knows as the Fourth Reich.
S has served seven years of a sentence that will keep him in prison for another seven years. He began serving time in his early 20s, and was in and out of prison numerous times before he received the lengthy sentence that he now serves. I asked him what it was that compelled him to devote his life to a prison gang.
Like many young men who begin serving a prison term, S shook with fear when he thought about the challenges he would face as a prisoner. Being a “white guy” defined him, and he found solidarity with others who identified themselves as “white guys,” or “woods” as they’re called in some prison systems. S told me that he admired the “woods” (white guys with shaved heads) because, from his perspective, others prisoners respected them and he wanted to become a part of what they stood for–white pride.
When I asked S what he intended to do with his life upon release, he didn’t have a solid answer. All of his personal identification, it seemed, was rooted in being white, and the energy level of his expressions rose when he spoke about prison legends, infamous gang members, and the importance of tattoos.
Part of my role as a long-term prisoner who aspires to teach and lead is to open the eyes of young prisoners like S. I explain to them what I’ve learned from serving more than two decades in prison, and what I’ve learned from listening to others who’ve been confined with me. Instead of thinking about life in prison, I urged S to contemplate steps he could take to lead a meaningful life outside of prison. When he spoke about the “respect” that he perceived is given to his fellow gang members, I asked him to question whether he was confusing respect with fear. Respect, I suggested, is a virtue earned by good works, and admiration. A person deserving of respect could live in society with his head held high, never hiding, always strong in his demeanor. When I asked S whether gang members could ever hope for such honorable roles in society, he said that he hadn’t thought of respect in such terms.
I’d like to persuade S to value a better way of life, but prisons seem to radicalize so many men who are lost and meander through life in a quest for something to belong to. They live without hope; they’re incapable of grasping steps they can take to create meaning in their lives. I consider it my duty to educate these young prisoners, or at least try to inspire them to think differently and to make positive changes.
This morning I ran eight miles in the rain. I had the track to myself, and I appreciated the solitude. I ran a shorter distance, and I’ll do so again tomorrow, because I want to end the year with an even number.
[Consecutive running log: 3,392 miles over the past 383 days]
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
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