When Coming Home Means Unlearning Survival: Prison Politics and the Racism We Don’t Talk About

5 min read

1 hour ago

Real talk — we need to have an honest conversation about what’s really happening behind those walls. And I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff. I’m talking about how racism gets repackaged as “prison politics” and how that mess follows people home, making it damn near impossible to rejoin society after doing serious time.

See, when folks get locked up for years — and I mean real years, not just a county bid — they enter a whole different world with its own rules. These rules ain’t written down nowhere official, but everybody inside knows them. They call it “prison politics,” and on the surface, it sounds like it’s just about respect, protection, and keeping order in a chaotic environment. But let me tell you what it really is: it’s racism with a survival handbook.

The Game Behind the Game

Prison politics operates on one fundamental principle: racial segregation. In most facilities across this country, you eat with your own, you work out with your own, you handle business with your own. African descendants with African descendants, European descendants with European descendants, Latinos with Latinos. They’ll tell you it’s about “cultural identity” or “mutual protection.” But strip away all that, and what you got? State-sanctioned segregation that would make Jim Crow blush.

Here’s what gets me: the system knows this is happening. The guards see it. The…