Raw by Lamont U-God Hawkins

Author:Lamont U-God Hawkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

11.

ON THE INSIDE

Before I entered Manhattan House of Detention, I’d never been to real jail before, at least, not for any longer than a week. As much shit as I did on Staten Island, I never got locked up out there. I got arrested once in Harlem, when I went to go plug the connect who gave me the bad coke, and another time when I got caught in Times Square with the stolen whip from the Africans and did the weekend in the Tombs. That was small shit compared to this.

I had to learn the jail scene in a hurry, though, because that was going to be my reality for the next year at least. Of course it was tough at first. Your first time in jail, you don’t really know how to bid. I didn’t know anything about touching the phones or how to earn respect from the dudes controlling the yard. I had to learn all that shit fast.

Prison is by no means like it’s shown in the movies, but I learned so much about human beings there. My time behind bars was a really insightful look into the human mind and spirit. There’s no school like jail. Everything is stripped away. You can’t hide behind your guns or your hood or your crew or your clothes or even your rep. You’re gonna get tested, and you better have the right answers, or it’s curtains for the rest of your bid. When I was in there, that’s exactly what it was like.

* * *

I didn’t like those Manhattan House motherfuckers I was with. They were too boozy and soft, just a bunch of sucker-asses. They had strayed into being Savages, as stated in Degree 1-2: “Why did Mussa [aka Moses] have a hard time civilizing the devil in 200 B.C.? Answer: Because he was a Savage. A Savage is a person who has lost knowledge of himself and is living a beast way of life. Civilize means to teach knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to the human family of the planet earth.”

Now, me being a civilized man in jail, that’s what the Supreme Mathematics did for me. Being that I had knowledge of self, it kept me from being a Savage in pursuit of happiness.

That wasn’t going to stop the Savages from banging into you, but it also made you aware of what you were dealing with. You were dealing with a person who was an 85 percenter: dumb, deaf, and blind. A slave to mental deafness and power, who did not know himself, did not know who he was, didn’t have any teachings, and was ignorant to himself. Who was locked in mental bondage, stripped of his own language and identity. He did not know that, so that’s why he was living a beastful way of life. Those in the hood who don’t have knowledge of self and who don’t really know themselves can also stray into that self-destructive mentality, because knowledge of the self helps you and prevents you from becoming a Savage.

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