Prison Radio
Charles Karim Diggs

My name is Charles Karim Diggs. My subject today is white supremacy.

I think first we have to understand this country was founded by white males, and all the laws, rules, and customs was put in place to benefit white landowners, white males. Not even women were included in this concept.

But more importantly, white supremacy, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a mental state. It’s not really the color of your skin. Because you can put a black man, a red man, a yellow man in a position, and he’s still operating under this particular customs and laws of this country. And if you’re not wealthy, you feel the impact of this white supremacy.

Most of you- your courts are 97%, uh, run by white males, your legislators, you know, your police departments. And so you have this inbuilt system that works for certain people and not for the others in the society. And so what we need to start is, change the history of this country and tell the truth, you know, how it was started, you know, how develop- how the economic system developed, how the slaves played a part, how the Indians were exterminated from the process.

And then people, once they know the truth, then you can begin to eliminate, you know, the white supremacy that this concept that, you know, Europeans are supreme over other people, you know, that’s what it represented: you were supreme, we’re better, what we say is the law, no one else has a say so about this.

This is why many of your Supreme Court justices, as they say they want to go back to the original intent of the Constitution. Well the original intent of the Constitution didn’t include blacks, Indians, women, you know, everybody, but wealthy landowners, so we don’t want to- we don’t want to go to the original intent.

So my point is I’m trying to bring out that white supremacy really is, it’s a mental, a spiritual, moral, economic, and educational system that’s in place. This is why you find in your cities, most of the white people who’ve left the cities and left the schools to African-Americans and Hispanics. Then they take their tax money with them. So now the schools are underfunded, and that excess money is being built- used to build prisons. So you have this, uh, massive, uh, inferior education and it’s been driven by white supremacy that white people don’t want to go to school with other children. And so their children are being taught white supremacy, we’re better than them, for whatever reason they think that.

So just this white supremacy is this continuing, this continuous process from generation to generation. Even if the parents are not telling the the children, you know, directly white supremacy, don’t like blacks, they may not be telling them that in those terms. But the setup, their actions, the way they set up the social interaction in society, it makes that white supremacy a reality.

I think that we begin to have dialogue or discussion break the word down: white supremacy, what does it actually mean, and how’s it instituted, how is it operating? We have many black politicians, mayors, and, uh, congressmen, legislators, and police captains, wardens in prisons, and all types of positions. People of color have gotten in, but we still, in many areas in the country, we were doing worse than we did a hundred years ago, you know, so we have to realize this- this mentality of white supremacy is institutionalized in the law and the rules. This is why cops stopped more blacks on the highway than white people, you know, give us costs and fines.

It’s- it’s really a, um, whole nation that’s been indoctrinated into this concept that we play into it and don’t even know it. So I hope that I’ve given um some, uh, understanding some of the solutions that they- we have to have change the fake history, teach the truth of how the country actually was developed, why it was developed the way it was.

And what we need to do is start rewriting, restructuring, or amending many of the laws in the country but include women, poor people, people of all races and ethnic groups in this country. Then we can actually say we had something, we really had something to do with making these laws, because everybody’s input everybody’s idea would be in the law, in the rules, in the regulation.

It’s just like prison. Prisons was constructed by someone believed that punishment was the way to cure people of their problems, and it just won’t work. It never works. It never will work. The solution to most people’s problem is love, good food, an education, a safe place to rest their head at night. Those, all the cures for the majority of the ills in this country, in the world, in fact.

So that’s my little contribution for tonight, and I hope everyone has gotten some understanding of white supremacy and I hope they can take it farther. Thank you.

These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.