From “The Wounds Are the Witness: Black Faith Weaving Memory into Justice and Healing” by Yolanda Pierce
Here is what we rarely admit. We desperately want to remove the crimes of the impoverished and disenfranchised from our sight because of our own vulnerability and shame. We are ashamed to face the fact that many of us are only a paycheck away from being uninsured or facing homelessness or facing tough choices for how to survive. And we fervently want to identify with those of wealth and high status, wishing that we had the financial means to shield us from the consequences of our sins and bad decisions.
We are living in a delusion. We will not be a safer nation because we allow state-sanctioned murders via the death penalty. We will not be made safer by a multibillion dollar prison industrial complex. We will not be a safer nation because we routinely stop and frisk Black and Brown people without just cause. We certainly will not be a safer nation because we prosecute the ten-dollar theft and leave the million-dollar theft untouched.