Prison taught me privilege

I made really bad choices. I mean really bad choices. Despite having the health insurance to do inpatient drug treatment and lots of family support, there were many times I considered living in my car so that I could continue to use heroin. (Usually when my mom was threatening to kick me out for using.) I seriously entertained the idea of voluntarily living in my car. I wanted a way where I could keep using in peace without someone constantly harassing or shaming me about my use.

I recognized I was making bad choices and I didn’t care. That was the lens through which I saw the rest of the world. When I saw homeless people, I would feel a twinge of sympathy, but I could assuage my guilt with the thought, “They made bad choices, one day this might be me and I’ll deserve it.” Clearly, I had never actually talked to anyone on the streets and listened as they told me about their lives. The fact I acknowledged I’d made bad choices is privilege in and of itself; it is to acknowledge that I had choices. And if I have choices, everyone else does too. After all, this is America, the land of opportunity.

Jail was a rude awakening. Deprived of anything better to do, I talked to people, listened, and eavesdropped. Multnomah County Inverness Jail has a high homeless population. My first night in jail, I learned my bunkmate had been raped the day before her arrest, preyed upon for being shelterless, then arrested for a petty crime. Outlier, my rational brain thought. But after so many months at Inverness, the patterns became undeniable. Foster care. Sexual abuse. Domestic violence. Homelessness. It is accepted that in jail the vast majority of women have been sexually assaulted. This gives the topic legitimacy not found in standard society, a forum. Many women will discuss their abuse openly. Somewhere around 90% of inmates report being sexual abused. I heard stories of childhood sexual abuse so horrid, they still haunt me. Where were their choices, options, and opportunity? Their tragedy started young.

A huge percentage of IJ inmates don’t cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze. I found this disgusting, a fault of both respect and hygiene. But wait. How old was I when I learned to cover my mouth when I sneeze or cough? I was a little kid. I wasn’t making my own choices, they were being made for me.

ConAir is real. It’s kind of like the movie. Your wrists are cuffed and chained to your stomach via a belly chain and your ankles are shackled together. Everyone on ConAir is on their way to federal prison, bona fide criminals. I was shocked to hear the conversations around me while we taxied. People looked around with panic in their eyes, asking, “Have you ever flown before?” Most people hadn’t. Air travel, I understood then, was a hallmark of privilege.

During my first dental exam, the prison dentist remarked, “Wow you had braces. We don’t see much of that around here.” My mom made me get braces. They hurt, they were ugly, and do you remember that episode with the head gear? How dare she. Those braces, which I had lamented so much, were a hallmark of privilege. (Duh, I think now, when I consider their cost.)

I offered my neighbor some powdered milk for her coffee and she was repulsed. “Hell no. That shit reminds me of my childhood, that WIC powdered milk, and my mom trying to stretch it out with water so it would last. Nasty. I hate that shit.”

Covering my mouth is reflexive, I flew for the first time when I was 5, I had braces, no one I love has ever died violently, my family wasn’t on WIC, I never had an incarcerated parent, and I graduated high school. I was the outlier, not them. I was the freak. I was the minority. None of that is because I made better choices. It’s because I had better options and opportunities. Most of the people in prison are there not for making a series of bad life choices for being given a series of bad life options, thanks mostly to inter-generational poverty.

Now when I see unsheltered people it pains me, and all I can think is, “Damn it’s cold.” It hurts a lot more to see the suffering when you can’t write it off as “their own fault”. Black and white is insulating, easier. Shades of gray and the complexity of humans open you up to discomfort. Truth isn’t easy.

I lived such a segregated life, only interacting with others “like me”, that I assumed everyone had the same options as me. The reverse of that is that I could blame people for their own misfortune. That in this country everyone has an opportunity to succeed is a bitter fallacy with tragic consequences. It took me going to prison to recognize my own privilege, of which I now realize I have in abundance.