From: Mark Clement <MClement@bruderhof.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 10:57:53 -0500
FROM MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
A CHILD = A MAN
Column Written 11/19/99
Mumia Abu-Jamal
All Rights Reserved
When is a child not a child?
When he is a black child, apparently.
The spectacle of Nathaniel Abraham, sitting in a courtroom, his life
in the hands of 12 strangers, is a stunning indictment of the American
"justice" system, where youth is no mitigator.
A troubled youth, to be sure, he was less an individual than an
opportunity. An opportunity for some political animal to make his mark, not
on a young, tender life, but on one's future career.
In a remarkable compromise verdict, the jury in the case acquitted
the boy of weapons charges, while simultaneously convicting him of 2nd
Degree Murder, a charge that may result in his banishment to the
netherworlds of America's prison industrial complex for the very rest of his
life.
America, which preaches to the world of its vaunted "human rights,"
is also the world's leader in incarceration rates. It is creating and
sustaining one of the most repressive prison systems in the West, and
increasingly becoming much more repressive for juveniles. But, it is
increasingly becoming common that a juvenile is just another commodity; a
body to be caged, for longer periods of time. Not a person in need, not a
youth to be rescued, not a life to be transformed.
Nathaniel Abraham was such a one. Charged in the accidental
shooting of a Detroit neighbor, the state mobilized its anti-life forces to
capitalize on the case, and to secure careers.
After decades of fierce and unprincipled demonization by the elite
media, the lives of black, Hispanic and poor youth, once exposed to the
"tender mercies" of the system, are in direst jeopardy. It is in this
spirit that a boy like Nathaniel became more than a boy; he was, and is,
projected as a dark symbol of social pathology; with little or no hope of
his renewal.
If there is some constant in the psyche of the young, it is that
they are in a constant state of growth and development. Their essential
nature is that they change; that is, perhaps, what they do best!
But Nathaniel Abraham, a little boy of 11 at the time of the
shooting, and a little boy of 13 at the time of his trial, will not be
allowed to really change, for legally he is adult, and any change is
irrelevant.
At the very least, young Nathaniel will be held in Michigan
confinement until he is 21 years of age-10 years. At most, he will be caged
forever, frozen like a small museum exhibit, in a block of time, no matter
how long he lives, nor what he may achieve, no matter who he later becomes
as a man: he will be a symbol, a relic that denies his essential reality, as
a living, growing being.
It is an irony of American history that where once grown black men
were seen as boys, now boys, of no matter how tender an age, are seen, and
treated, as men. The constant feature in this social and historical process
is the projection upon the eternal other, of values of worthlessness and
powerlessness-a relic of our dark and tragic past that we drag along into
the future. The astute writer James Baldwin once noted:
It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6 or 7 to discover
that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody
else, has not pledged allegiance to you.
Young Nathaniel Abraham, if denied the natural right to be seen and
treated as a child, unwittingly serves as another form of social symbol: he
is the canary in a cage, and as he is carried deeper and deeper into the
bowels of the earth, he warns us of an impending catastrophe.
© MAJ 1999