Say it ain't so

October 04, 2008 12:43 am

— Somebody — anybody — please tell me it ain't so. When I first read the article entitled, "Miss. Governors Historically Set Killers Free," I was more than a little disturbed by what I was reading, not about the governors' actions related to the individual and case sighted in the article, but by the entire practice and tradition itself.
The practice and tradition of using prisoners as work details at the governor's mansion, today in real time, is paradoxically eerily similar to the paradox of slavery. Except during slavery the work details were slave at the mansion of the master. Black servants, slaves, defined by law and class viewed as less than human yet placed in a position of trust with the masters family young and old, his treasures and property, trusted as a servant not as a citizen, lazy as a human being, hard working as a servant, their station codified in law, brutally enforced, instantly betrayed yet loyal until death. The powerful and the powerless locked in an eerie dance.
What we find today taking place on the grounds of the governor's mansion, for this Mississippian at least, is too closely akin to the situation described above. The only difference being is that the slave had his or her station in life prescribed for them. Whereas what's taking place today at the governor's mansion is that the servants stations for the most part is of their own making and choosing never the less the paradox is virtually the same, not trusted as a citizen, trusted as a servant, lazy as a citizen, hard working as a servant, perhaps jobless as a citizen, useful as a servant. The powerful and the powerless locked in an eerie dance.
If we as Mississippians truly attempting to cultivate an image in step with the 21st Century, this is one tradition we should have done away with a long, long, time ago.
Let me be clear I have nothing against the rehabilitation of prisoners, I happen to believe that working at the governor's mansion is a job best suited for our upstanding law abiding citizens.

Onzie Glenn
Louisville