00:01 – Kevin

For me, the only similarity between the racism that I experienced in prison and the racism that I experienced on the streets was the level of sadness that it brought me. Because when I got to prison, I realized how much it had actually affected me. And it genuinely made me sad because I realized that “Wow, I’ve kind of been a victim, and I don’t know why.” And I’ve also victimized some people primarily because of the difference of their skin. Because when I felt like I was a victim, I reacted and victimized.

00:41 – Kevin

There was just an overwhelming sadness that came over me in prison when I really realized how deep this racism thing ran. There was always that pall that hung over everybody in prison. You always knew that just under this was the opportunity for somebody to react in an extremely violent way, and that you could lose your life, or you could end up taking somebody’s life. I think a lot of what I dealt with as an adult, as far as determining race relations and my relationship with people of a different race was based primarily on what I experienced then.

01:21 – Kevin

Early on, I had a deep, deep fear of people of another race. I was 12 years old, and we were going to visit my uncle in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we were riding the bus and the bus stopped in New Orleans, Louisiana. Well, at 12 I was six foot tall, so I looked like an adult, but I was a 12-year-old child. And my mother had purchased the tickets, and my ticket was a half-price ticket.

01:50 – Kevin

So, when we got to the second bus, after we had ridden from Houston to New Orleans—we had a layover. We got ready to get back on the second bus and there was an older white gentleman who was the bus driver, and I handed him my ticket and he looked at it, and he looked at me. And he said in no uncertain terms, “N–, I don’t know who you talked to, but you’re not getting on my bus for half price.”

02:20 – Kevin

And I know now that it was in reference to the fact that I looked like an adult, but at the time it was just him thinking that Here’s this Black guy who was trying to get over on me or whatever. So, I think from that point forward that I became more conscious of race because I knew that this man, as an older white man, controlled whether or not I could travel based on his determination of me at that time.

02:46 – On-Screen Text

Kevin was incarcerated twice, serving a total of 27 years.

02:54 – Kevin

Compassion doesn’t exist or didn’t exist in prison at that time. Compassion was weakness. Compassion was an invitation for you to be hurt, raped, killed. Compassion was weakness in prison, and it didn’t matter what race you were. There was no such thing as compassion. If I saw a Black guy get hurt, it wasn’t my job to go over there and show him compassion. It was his job to get up and show his strength. If I saw a white guy get hurt, it was my job, my responsibility to talk about how he had just gotten what he deserved. For me to say anything else outside of that in prison during that time was cause for me to be looked at with suspicion and possibly hurt somewhere down the line.

03:51– Kevin

I think one of the biggest causes of racism in prison is just the fact that there was just a lack of knowledge of each other. I think that your lack of knowledge about me, about my racial background—I take that personally. Why should I? Why should you know anything about me racially in my background? That lack of information creates that tension.

04:15 – Kevin

It was palpable in prison. It was thick in prison. And there was no way for you to talk about race in prison because as a Black man in prison, if you spoke about a white guy in prison in anything other than derogatory terms, then you were seen as being weak. And you were seen as being somebody who was trying to sell out your people because you’ve got something good to say about white people, and white people don’t mean us any good in prison.

04:46 – On-Screen Text

Near the end of his second prison term, Kevin was transferred to the Carol S. Vance Unit in Richmond, Texas.

There he participated in the Prison Fellowship Academy.

04:57 – Kevin

When I got off the bus, when I first went to Carol Vance, I was still Muslim. These men met me at the back gate trying to hug me, trying to help me with my bag, and I’m looking at them like, “Man, y’all need to back up a little bit, man. I don’t…”

05:13 – Kevin

So, it disappeared there. Those lines—the lines that I had always seen and always knew existed—disappeared when I got to the Vance unit, but it scared me. Because you always think, There’s something else. There’s something to this. This ain’t…

05:28 – Kevin

My views on race changed dramatically when I actually started interacting in the Academy. Everybody that I talked to, that I interacted with—there was always that genuineness that you got from them. That genuine compassion for you. That genuine concern for you. That genuine desire to help. We’re not going to use the race card so you can feel sorry for this, so you can do that. What we’re going to do is we going to address this from the Christian’s perspective. And if from that perspective, we can find room to disagree or to have these different—that’s fine, but we’re not going to do it like that. And I didn’t realize it until later how much it had broken or taken down so many walls. So, it just kind of destroyed a lot of racial walls and barriers for me.

06:19 – Kevin

There was one thing that I would hope for people in society that I learned in prison is that, usually, when there’s some kind of tension going on, racial tension going on—it’s usually being manipulated by someone or some people or something that has an ulterior motive. That needs you separated. That doesn’t need you to be able to see each other as human beings because once we start to see each other as human beings, then we start to have compassion for one another. And once we start having compassion for one another, then we start to help one another. And if we ever got to the point to where all we wanted to do in this world was help each other, then we’d live in a truly Christian society that wouldn’t need all of the other governance that we get that make no sense at all.

07:07 – Kevin

So, for me, my desire is for all of us to understand that if there’s something about a person of a different race that you don’t know or you don’t understand—or if you have some feelings for them that you don’t understand the origin of, or that you just want to investigate—talk to people.