A CHILD = A MAN
By MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
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