Arms, Africa, and America’s Inmate Industry

By Ezrah Aharone

What do Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms have in common? Well, to start with, they have a clear connection to crime and violence, which is why the U.S. government ATF bureau exists. Beyond that, all three were primary commodities of the Triangular Trade for slaves. In addition, all three have since remained chief factors that inordinately affect the health and lives of Black people across the globe.

No other metal product of the Triangular Trade was more significant, cruel, and lasting in impact than guns. Firearms were mass-produced in America according to standards of that day, and Africa was the primary export destination. What began as modest tinkering in small metal shops, with enslaved African expert-blacksmiths, was fused with Euro-American greed and aggressiveness. The end product evolved into what is today’s high-tech multi-trillion-dollar U.S. arms industry.

The heavy export of guns to Africa during the slave era, shares commercial and strategic commonalities with the current saturation of illegal guns in Black communities and the escalation of arms in Africa used in cycles of coups and countercoups. Since political independence, Africans have been fighting and killing each other in revolutions, as though shooting and hacking off limbs are sports.

No one knows the exact number of millions killed and swallowed whole in these wars where even infants and grandmothers are expendable. Three things however are certain. One, the wake has produced over 8 million refugees who live in abject poverty. Two, American arms suppliers account for over 60 percent of weapons used, where assault rifles have sold on African streets for as little as $6. Three, African conflicts typically involve energy and mineral resources, of which the majority of financiers, distributors, and consumers are located in America, Western Europe, and Israel.

Oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, and chromium are some of the choice resources sought, which the West often uses as bartering mediums to arm self-styled African revolutionaries. The American public then becomes aghast in open-mouth astonishment when watching the evening news and seeing dead, decomposed bodies scattered about African streets, while skinny 11-year old boys walk around with assault weapons, smoking Marlboros.

The question of who is behind the sale of these arms is too often overlooked. But whenever scenes from the next African conflict appear on your television, look closely, because you just may see the “Made in America” label on the trigger.

Meanwhile back on the Black American front, gun slayings continue, with Black women and children likewise being left unprotected from the fray. But there’s a major difference— These killings don’t concern sovereignty or political struggles or natural resources. Brothers in America shoot our own people over narcotics and “beefs.” As long as these “street wars” remain self-destructive and confined to this level, there’s no cause for alarm from the government. Besides, the Iran-Contra Scandal was factually connected to killings, gunrunning, and drug dealings in Black communities— And nobody was ever held accountable.

Due to known business interests, the U.S. government seems nearly as apathetic about firearm deaths of Blacks today, as during the slave trade. This is because Black homicides and handguns are linked to an economic environment conducive to ever-elaborate schemes of White profiteering. Just as guns and murders were central to the success of the multi-trillion-dollar “slave industry,” they now are central to the success of the multi-trillion-dollar “inmate industry.”

Federal inmates work for $1.15 an hour at 106 prison factories under the Justice Department entity called UNICOR (Unique Corporation). In 2005, UNICOR supplied goods worth over $750 million to the federal government. What’s notable is that more than 60 percent of its work is contracted by the military. Proponents say UNICOR fulfills Pentagon and defense needs quicker and more efficiently than any private enterprise could. According to the Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities (EPCF), UNICOR produces everything from military uniforms, to Kevlar helmets, to wires for weapons, to cables for missiles and helicopters.

EPCF reports that the U.S. military profits from selling some of these same prison-made products overseas, where they “fall into the hands of violent regimes,” of which African insurrectionists are among. Like enslaved blacksmiths who made guns that were shipped to Africa in a revolving door process to capture more slaves, inmates now manufacture components for weapons that are shipped to Africa to destabilize governments in a revolving door process to acquire more resources.

Our 17th century ancestors probably never imaged that their initial tinkering of gun making would spawn into a multi-trillion-dollar arms industry with a subsidiary inmate industry. And, it definitely was even more inconceivable to them that, we would degenerate in the 21st century to the point where Black-on-Black handgun homicide is the leading cause of death for young Black males, while death tolls from African revolutions are too vast to accurately count.