Silenced.

As in, a substantial percentage of the African-American male population is being silenced throughout our country. Variations in state laws make it so that different proportions of the population are having their voices--and their supposedly inalienable rights--stripped from them, but only two states in the entire nation have refrained from engaging in this terrible practice, and to be frank, there aren't really many Black people in those states anyway. Really though, this is disgusting. How can an ex-felon ever fully be rehabilitated into a quote-unquote normal life if he or she can't fully participate in society, if he or she has no say in what goes on in his or her own daily life? When this extends to large parts of entire communities, we are creating color-by-number portraits whilst missing a few crayons. We'll never get the whole picture, and the voids we're leaving behind are just dangerous. I can think of no stronger way to suggest that these people simply don't matter to the American state. 

Reblogged from Sociological Images