Your Favorite University Invests in Private Prisons: How Schools May Be Using Your Student Loans

Rant: We no longer live as kings and queens.  We fear death and the art of dying. Therefore, we submit to debt and slavery.  Americans have succumbed to living as chattel.  Young Americans have determined themselves to relish the federal reserve note.  Humans now worship paper dollars over tree leaves; money over nature.  This has resulted in prioritizing materials and digital technology.  American millennials and generation Zs are shoveling their own economic grave by burying themselves in student loan debt.  Financial freedom in the United States is now considered to be just an American dream. Go outside kids.

Introduction – New Slaves, Young Students

In the United States, American students have accumulated more than $1.6 trillion dollars in total student loan debt (Kerr, Emma. US NEWS. 2020).  Even more depressing, this debt has indirectly been authorized to invest in private prisons.  Universities, such as the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the private prison industry. (Afrikan Black Coalition, 2015)(Burstein & Caldera, Harvard Crimson. 2020). 

The increase of college tuition in the 21st century has increased drastically resulting in millions of Americans to accumulate more student loans than ever before.  Young Americans have sacrificed their time trying to obtain “higher education” because they were promised a more financially stable future. Well, how equitable is this “financially stable future”?  And how near is this future?  Not only will the current education system crumble the monetary future of young millennials and generation Zs, but most of these young folks will become irate when they discover that their favorite American universities have partaken in human bondage, trafficking, and private prisons for centuries.

American Universities and Transatlantic Slavery

European descendants within American academias have been profiting from human bondage for at least five centuries.  “Incoming presidents often brought enslaved people to campus or secured servants after their arrival. Harvard president Benjamin Wadsworth [1725-1737] owned an enslaved black man named Titus, who lived with the president’s family.” (Wilder, Craig S. Bloomsbury Press. pg. 119-20).  Ivy League schools in America including Yale, Columbia, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania were directly involved with persisting slavery in America.     

Most people do not realize that slavery continued in the U.S.A. after 1865.  The 13th Amendment secured this nation’s culture of melanated human bondage.   As the amendment states, “Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2009).  At first, the 13th Amendment seems like peaches and cream doing away with Black slavery, but there is a major exception in the legislation.  Essentially the amendment claims melanated slaves are free from bondage except when convicted of a jurisdictional crime.  Therefore, Blacks, and anyone else presently incarcerated, are legally treated as slaves and used for economic gain. 

American Universities and Private Prisons

Prisoners are legal slaves.  I am not going to waste time describing the prison industrial complex and its racial biases.  If you do not know that American prisons have been built to legally enslave Black Americans then shame on you.  You have completely ignored the penal policies that have been terrorizing specifically Black and Brown communities as early as the 19th century.  

Technically, private prisons have been in the United States since the 19th century but its prevalence was rejuvenated during the 1980s. (Bauer, Shane. TIME. 2019).  The private company CoreCivic was founded by Thomas W. Beasley, T. Don Hutto, and Robert Crants in 1983, just around the time Ronald Reagan declared a war on drugs (a.k.a. War on Black people).  The sole purpose of prison maintenance companies such as CoreCivic is to make a profit, period.  To earn profit, beds must be filled. According to the The Sentencing Project organization, the population of private prisons has increased by 39% since the year 2000. (The Sentencing Project, 2019). 

  According to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), “In 2017, the year of most recent data, 28.5% of the state’s male prisoners were African American—compared to just 5.6% of the state’s adult male residents. The imprisonment rate for African American men is 4,236 per 100,000 people—ten times the imprisonment rate for white men, which is 422 per 100,000. For Latino men, the imprisonment rate is 1,016 per 100,000; for men of other races it is 314.” (Goss & Gumbs & Harris & Hayes, 2019).  Black Californians comprise of 1 in 20 residents within California, yet they make up more than 1 in 4 individuals in California prisons.  This is blatantly racists and a legal excuse to continue the European tradition of African chattel and genocide.  Black death row inmates comprise of 35% of the death row population in California prisons; 1 in 3 death row inmates are Black in California. (Death Penalty Information Center, 2020). 

Your Favorite University 

Your favorite universities have monetarily contributed to Black bondage in the United States since the 13 colonies.  The school known as the University of California, Berkeley has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into entities that support the maintenance and functionality of private prisons (i.e. Core Civic, etc).  “The Afrikan Black Coalition has confirmed with the University of California’s Chief Investment Officer that the University of California (“UC”) has investments in private prison corporations of $25 million…The Afrikan Black Coalition has also confirmed that the UC system has a startling $425 million invested in Wells Fargo, one of the largest financiers of private prisons.” (Afrikan Black Coalition).  These so-called liberal academias have perpetuated human bondage as early as the 17th century.  The culture of some American universities is absolutely heinous.  They have supported Black suffering using endowments to purchase Black labour.     

Conclusions – Reparations for Students    

Students are in debt because universities charge insidious amounts to attend their mediocre institutions.  In turn, universities use their private investments to buy Black slaves like Titus.  All this to say, students, especially Black students, are accumulating thousands of dollars in student loan debt and indirectly supporting human bondage.  Nonviolent offenders suffer from students enrolling in the university system.  

Without a shadow of a doubt, student loan debt amongst Black students should be expunged.  How do we pay for this? We investigate which entities and individuals have been financiers of private prisons since the 1900s. Every last family!  These demonic families will pay off the debt of students in America.  Just like Germany, and allies, had to pay reparations to White Jews during World War II.  The United States school system has disgraced its young student population.  No young American should be willing to accept this demonic practice authorized by universities.  

References

Wilder, Craig S. (2013) Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. New York, NY. Bloomsbury Press. pg. 119-20.  35, 82, 119, 157, 277, 

Burstein, Ellen M. & Caldera, Camille G. (2020). Harvard and Divestment Advocates Disagree Over How Much the University Puts Into Private Prisons. Here’s Why? The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/6/harvard-prison-divest-analysis/ 

Afrikan Black Coalition. (2015).  University of California has Millions Invested in Private Prisons. Afrikan Black Coalition.  https://www.afrikanblackcoalition.org/news/university-of-california-has-millions-invested-in-private-prisons 

National Center for Constitutional Studies. (2009). The Constitution of the United States. United States of America.  

Bauer, Shane. (2018). The True History of America’s Private Prison Industry. TIME. https://time.com/5405158/the-true-history-of-americas-private-prison-industry/ 

The Sentencing Project. (2019). Private Prisons in the United States. sentencingproject.org. https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ 

Goss, Justin & Gumbs, Alexandria & Harris, Heather & Hayes, Joseph. (2019). California Prison Population. Public Policy Institute of California. https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-prison-population/ 

Death Penalty Information Center. (2020). Racial Demographics: Current U.S. Death Row Population By Race. deathpenaltyinfo.org.  https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-row/overview/demographics 

Kerr, Emma. (2020). See 10 Years Average Total Student Loan Debt. US NEWS. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/see-how-student-loan-borrowing-has-risen-in-10-years