How our correspondent found his way out of the racial animosity enforced by prison and gang culture.

I was seven years old and in the first grade at Dorris Place Elementary, Los Angeles, the first time I remember contemplating race. It was 1980. I was given some homework, the assignment was to color an outline depicting a woman holding an apple. I remember sitting around the kitchen table with my sibling while my mother made sure we did our work. I wanted to color in peace so I grabbed my box of crayons and dashed off to my room. 

When I was done and satisfied with my work, I walked back into the kitchen and proudly presented it to my family. I handed the finished product to my mother, and as she reviewed it, I heard my siblings burst out into fits of laughter. I looked over at them to find out what was so funny and I realized that they were laughing at me for how I had colored the woman. My mother handed the coloring sheet back to me and asked, “Why did you color the woman dark brown?” I replied, “It’s my teacher.” This was my first experience consciously witnessing people viewing others differently because of the color of their skin. 

You see, my first-grade teacher, Ms. Ford, was a Black woman with a dark complexion, but that wasn’t all she was. Ms. Ford was tall, elegant in dress and looks, and she carried herself with confidence. She was a disciplinarian, and if any of her students got out of line, they felt the ruler.

As a Mexican-American raised in a predominantly Mexican community, the topics of race and ethnicity outside of my own were hardly discussed. It wasn’t until the coloring incident that I started to take notice of social divisions and differences between different racial and ethnic groups. With my ears perked and eyes wide open to this world, I caught every sight, heard the stereotypes, and felt prejudices that ran beneath the surface of the things bluntly expressed by my peers. 

As time went on, I absorbed these sentiments and incorporated them into my own belief system. This nourished my prejudiced racial perspectives of others, which later worsened when I entered into the gang subculture at 14 years old. Here, I learned to push a hard line for my own ethnicity. There was no intermingling across races, and if there was, it was frowned upon by people’s respective communities.

My convictions were reinforced when I entered EastLake Central Juvenile Hall, on L.A.’s eastside, in 1990 and later, the California state prison system. Here, invisible lines of racial boundaries are drawn and never crossed, further creating more separation and spite for the other side. The racial dynamic in juvenile hall demanded people stick to their own group, to only associate with those who looked similar to them. 

I recall a moment when the whole unit was sitting in the day room, and everyone was split into groups by race, even at our young age. The Blacks sat in the front and the Hispanics in the back. The counselor saw the division and was upset at what was playing out before her, so she tried mixing us up by having us sit side by side. She had us sit in an alternating sequence of people who were Black and Hispanic. But the following day, we were back in our old seats. 

Prison is similar, but more serious – every ethnic group has its own designated area and those boundaries aren’t crossed. These invisible lines maintain harmony in the prison environment, but they also foster hatred and ignorance. It was how I ended up feeling animosity for decades until my belief that somehow I was racially better came to a halt.

Anilynnah was a revelation that made it clear: you cannot hate that which is of your blood.

The turn for me happened 15 years ago while I was serving a term in the Segregated Housing Unit at California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi. My oldest daughter Isabel wrote me a letter, notifying me she was pregnant and that the father of her baby was Black. My deep-seated anti-Blackness at the time made me react negatively; I fought her tooth and nail about the pregnancy. I was trying to impose my beliefs on her regardless of what she needed physically, emotionally, and mentally. But thanks to God, my daughter is a strong woman. She stuck to her guns, went through with her pregnancy. My beautiful granddaughter arrived on Nov. 5, 2009, and was christened Anilynnah Chavez.

The birth of my grandchild changed my whole world. Anilynnah was a revelation that made it clear: you cannot hate that which is of your blood. Her existence immediately altered the prejudicial views I carried, and I finally realized the ignorance I had displayed in the past. In disregarding my daughters’ well-being, and in exhibiting prejudices towards a whole population of people, I had acted cruelly and callously.  

This new outlook of mine evolved into something wonderful. In spite of living in prison, a racially-fueled environment, I’ve learned to embrace diversity. I extend my hand of friendship to people of all creeds and ethnicities. I do my part in bringing awareness, informing others about race and how it’s a social construct. I have turned my past experience into a project because racism is an ongoing problem. My purpose is to try to approach the issue in any way, shape or form. The message, believe it or not, is well-received amongst those I encounter. 

My journey continued in 2017, when I took a social psychology class from Stratford Career Institute and learned about social constructs. I wanted to spread awareness and that led me to take a survey on the yard. For the survey, I asked 61 guys if they knew what a social construct was and if they had ever heard the phrase: “Race is a social construct.” Out of the 61 guys, eight were able to define what it was and confirmed that they had heard the term. These eight individuals had had some college education. The results were no surprise, as the rest of the guys I spoke with had a high school education or less and, generally speaking, I know that critical race theory is not being taught in primary and secondary education, and it sure isn’t being taught in prison GED classes.

I have been fortunate enough in my journey of seeking higher education to have been given answers to the questions I have had about race. Because community college learning is offered to us in most California prisons, I have been able to enroll in classes in subjects like anthropology, sociology, and Native American history. The prerequisite to enroll in these college-level classes is that the students have to have a high school diploma or a GED. I have found these classes to be generative and, in my opinion, college programs in prison are very productive, comparable with self-help/therapy programs. Learning in general expands the world as you know it. 

I leave you with a quote from Anilynnah. She’s an intelligent young lady and has taught me a lot: “A proper education not only molds and shapes a child’s mind, it broadens their view of the world and prepares them for adulthood.” Without the right education, people are likely left to believe what their community and peers believe, and the result of that could be terrible. My experience has taught me that.

---

Jose Chavez writes from Wasco State Prison in Wasco, California.