I didn't fully understand Ralph Ellison's classic novel "The Invisible Man" when I first read it in ninth grade. The dichotomies between light and dark, seen and unseen - these resonated with me as literary tropes, but not as social commentary. My English teacher told us Ellison's protagonist - chronically overlooked, almost transparent - was a comment on racism. But I had been taught black history in terms of policies and words, not in terms of oversight; racism was an act, not a lack. What, in the nonfiction world, did oppression have to do with invisibility?
This summer, the answers are becoming clearer. I am spending my time in Albion, N.Y., doing independent research through a Royce Fellowship grant. Albion is a rural town that hosts two New York state penitentiaries. I hope to see, among other things, exactly how these facilities affect the surrounding community.
When I first came here, though, it seemed I wouldn't be able to "see" much at all. I had to drive through town several times before I even glimpsed the two prisons, and I wouldn't have found them had I not been looking for them. Anyone passing through on a road trip along the Erie Canal can remain blissfully ignorant that over 2,000 of Albion's 8,000 "citizens" are behind bars. And legislators like Steve Hawley, the Republican state assemblyman for the district, can safely ignore the voices of his 2,000 invisible "constituents," knowing they'll never be allowed to vote.
What does the problem of prisoners' invisibility have to do with race? The incarcerated quartile of Albionites, like the national prison population, does not accurately represent the demographics of the United States. Overwhelmingly, imprisoned people are black city dwellers. In Rhode Island, for example, the general population is 4 percent black and the prison population is 30 percent black. In New York, the numbers are 15 percent and 51 percent. According to the census, Albion is 16 percent black and 8 percent Latino. But on my morning walk down Main Street (yes, it is called Main Street), almost every face I see is white. Where are the people of color? To me, and to my neighbors, they have been rendered invisible.
It's true that most people I meet in Albion don't display any outward racist malice. But many of them are conservative in the true sense of the word - and they are scared. Their imaginations, fueled by Fox News and USA Today, show them a world spinning out of control, no longer guided by the family values of the good old days. A key component of this frightful vision is the archetype, whether accurate or exaggerated, of the violent black or Hispanic male. They may not rage against this archetype, but they certainly want nothing to do with it.
Contrary to my ninth-grade misconception, racism does not always mean calling somebody names. Rather than hatred, racism could imply indifference or isolationism (both, in the broad Ellisonian sense, forms of blindness). To my ears, white state legislators' injunctions to "Lock 'em up" sound like the white separatist slogan of the early 20th century, "Blacks back to Africa!" They both mean roughly the same thing: "We wish you would disappear." And, at an alarming rate, black men are "disappearing" into the gargantuan correctional system.
America's unprecedented prison expansion over the last 25 years has gone largely unnoticed in the mainstream press. Prisons reveal America at its ugliest, and they should inspire anger rather than apathy. Instead, they are relegated to our back roads, rarely discussed even among those few free people who have the opportunity to see them. Since the eve of the Iraq war, the press has been forbidden to photograph the flag-draped caskets of American fatalities; similarly, most correctional facilities have "No Photos" signs posted along their razor wire borders. (If you don't believe me, I have photos to prove it.) Prison rules - about visits, about mail, about phone calls - often serve to silence the voices of inmates, especially those with controversial views.
Unfortunately, I can't suggest a neat solution to the problem of rural prisons' invisibility. Am I proposing that we make a big stink about prisons? That we build them in the public eye? That a live feed of Albion Correctional Facility be displayed in Times Square? This would raise awareness, but in the end it wouldn't solve much. Still, I am coming to understand how Ellison's protagonist could be so disturbed by what other people failed to see.
Andrew Marantz '06.5 is a 2006 Royce Fellow and asks you to visit PrisonersOfTheCensus.org.
