By Christopher Trotter

[The Streets Don't Love You Back]

By Christopher Trotter
Prison Is No Rite Of Passage To Manhood

What's going on with our young precious black manchilds thinking that coming to prison is somehow a rite of passage to manhood? How misinformed and miseducated can our precious manchilds be to think that having your freedom taken away, being separated from your family, love ones, children, and being told what you can or cannot do, and when you can eat and sleep is somehow a rite of passage to manhood?
Yet, our precious young black manchilds have been bamboozled, tricked, hoodwinked, and lead astray into believing such nonsense. One of the
many reasons why our manchilds are being deceived by such fiction is due to their homeboys doing small stints of time inside the belly of the beast
(prison) and returning to the hood with fictions, imaginary, and unreal stories of how they were doing hard time, racking, macking and jaw jacking.
Which glamorizes prison life like a rap video does street life. But the reality is, our precious manchilds are coming to prison doing nothing but sagging,
lagging and begging!!
I've been inside the belly of the beast for 32 straight years, and I've seen and done everything you can do in prison. I'll be the first to tell you that prison
is no rite of passage to manhood, and there is noting glamorous about prison life. Prison is no place for a human to be. It's a place where they strip
human dignity away, where they take everything that means something to you and turn it to nothing, where they transform you from a human being
into a prison being and you become nothing more than a prison number, a commodity (sale) for exploited labor.
It pains my soul when I see our young precious black manchilds come into this belly of the beast attempting to do what they think is" hard time".
Their way of doing hard time is being rebellious without cause which does nothing but make their time much harder to do. Trust me, I know what
doing hard will get you because I turned a four (4) year prison term for petty theft into a 142 year slow death sentence. Wish I had someone
to tell me that it's about doing "smart-time" not hard-time, then I probably wouldn't be sitting in this small, cold, and lonely cell writing to you now.
being a man is about having a love for God in your heart, being responsible and taking responsibility for the choices you make, being humble
and treating others with love and kindness no matter who they are or what they've done, respecting and loving yourself, educating your
mind and doing "smart time".
We need to start telling our precious young black manchilds the truth about prison life. so they can avoid the trap that is already in place
for them to step into. There is nothing glamorous about being treated as a slave, and being looked upon as nothing more than a prison number.

Inside The Belly Of The Beast
String But Human
Chris Trotter