For more than ten years, in every week or two, I have spent a couple of hours in conversation and reflection with men in the prisons at Attica or Sing Sing -- men whose long years in prison have sharpened in them a desire for inner freedom not common in "the mass of men." In respect for the men I have known and for their aspirations, and because the spirit of fatherhood belongs to all who are mature, let us take advantage of this Father's Day to turn our well-wishing toward the ends for which our hearts are shaped; toward compassion for every son and every father who is in prison. And especially for black and brown men in prison.
The men I have met in prison are black, black, Latino, black, white, black, Latino, black. I would like you to see them and to feel their condition. Many have not known their fathers well. Many are determined to know and support their own children well -- and feel anguish and shame for being now far removed from their youths. Some of you are no doubt the fathers and grandfathers of men in prison, their sisters and wives and mothers, their brothers, their daughters and sons. I say this not because we feel free to tell the stories as yet, but because in 2006, one in fourteen black men was in prison versus one in 106 white men. Between the ages of 20 and 35, one of every nine black men is behind bars. One third of American black men are under the control of courts, prisons, or parole boards. These men are your sons. We are all their fathers. But America is pitiless. For the most part, the culture of the American church makes it unsafe to talk about the systematic injustice of our prison practices. The whole situation resembles the aftermath of that terrifying storm in New Orleans, when every body in the ruined waters was black and black and black, yet America would not acknowledge that the human disaster was one of edgeless racial indifference built over decades to those awful days.
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