SILENCE OF WHITE PROFESSIONALS ON THE PLANTATION SEALED THE WORKER'S FATE

The Youth Service Officers at Connecticut Juvenile Training School have been betrayed by two groups. When the workers were trying to fight racial injustice on the plantation at CJTS the management -which is basically  all white - came out to thwart the aspirations of the unwashed masses. Key Stone Cops management singled out suspected agitators, used right wing YSOs to intimidate workers, and disciplined those fighting against injustice. From a historical point of view it is understood that those in power will do whatever is necessary to maintain their position. In the words of Shakespeare.... Macbeth reads "to be a king is nothing, unless one's position is safe." Well white management certainly tried to make sure no one threatened that lofty perch they sat on.

However the second betrayal at CJTS came at the hands of white professionals like clinical social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and teachers. The majority of these white professionals are women and watched in silence as the scene of rampant racism, nepotism, giving overtime to favored staff took place. In the mean time back at the ranch, these silent white professionals went about their task "of trying to get the minds right" with incarcerated residents. Now the CJTS plantation is about to lay off YSOs who are mostly people of color, because outside forces want to shut down the facility. While YSOs wait for their pink slips the white professionals have started to slither off to other places of employment, they see the reduction in residents from 150 to 40, and started deserting CJTS like rats off a sinking ship. The facility might not have been run into the ground by management, nor racial injustices taken place, if those white professionals spoke the truth to power. But the white folks collected pay checks, talked to the natives [ incarcerated residents ] in their natural habitat, and did not utter one damn word about what went on in terms of racial injustices. White professionals were drinking from the cup of white privilege.

Let me be as clear as I can be. The CJTS plantation is closing down because excesses occurred that diminished human beings who worked there; a culture of abuse took place for so long until even those that supported the white supremacy at CJTS could no longer ignore the facts. White management did everything possible to hide what was going on, and this includes putting blame for issues at the facility on YSOs like Dupree, former employee Cornell Lewis, current YSO Kevin Strachen, current supervisor Linette Gaunichaux. By the way all of those just mentioned are people of color, ergo, white management just followed in the old American tradition of "blame it on black folk.

In conclusion we must correctly state how the silence of white professionals contributed to years of dysfunctional activity on the CJTS plantation and abuse of workers of color. Desmond TuTu wrote  "to be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo."