Good News for Prisoners Elicits Anger and Resentment from Good People. Why? Class Inequality Is Why.

This anger and resentment would not exist in an egalitarian society

The full Boston Globe article about this program to let prisoners get a college degree is here. The article is a ‘feel good’ article, focused on a young man, Juan Pagan, who escaped as a child from an abusive family by joining a gang that led him to kill a member of a rival gang.

The article tells us:

Now 33, he’ll be awarded his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University Tuesday. He’ll collect it at a ceremony at MCI-Concord along with nine other incarcerated students in the first-ever graduating class of the Tufts University Prison Initiative of the Tisch College of Civic Life.“Many of us are imprisoned because of bad choices that felt like the only choices,” Pagan wrote in a graduation speech he shared with the Globe. The Tufts program “helped us to see, feel and aspire to more.

“Professors affirming that I am worthy and have something positive to offer society is the greatest gift I have ever received. I now know that I can be an asset to my family and community because [the program] helped me gain back that ineffable part of me that prison repressed — my humanity,” he wrote.

I want to call your attention to the angry and resentful comments posted to this article and the fact that such comments would not be made if we lived in an egalitarian society.

Some of the thirteen (at the time I am writing this) comments were, naturally, very positive, praising the article and praising the Tufts College prison program. But other comments were negative (or partially negative in the case of the last one). Here they are.

1. RSull1/19/24 - 8:43AM Dramatizing the fact that they hear a cell door close and latch behind them draws little sympathy from me. My kids went to state schools and could only dream of going to Tufts. They had to use student loans, (which wasn't enough) and worked while in school. Now that they work full time, should my kids be expected to support these programs, while they struggle and sacrifice to pay off loans from a far less desirable school ? My kids never killed anyone.

2. GadotG1/19/24 - 8:56AM For the state that has the poorest benefits for disabled veteran wounded in combat, this is a disgrace.

3. Gil681/19/24 - 8:44AM A globe story featuring a Latino man. And guess what, he's in prison! That's the only way you get into the globe if you're a brown man.

4. Numeral1/19/24 - 8:01AM I also praise prison education programs and I don’t know too many people who oppose them. But the writer seems to downplay is crime because it was a rival gang member that he killed. If he had killed a lawyer from Wellesley or a blond blue-eye woman studying at Wheaton the author would be a little more wary of the subject. The would be a lot more lock-em -up throw away the key people if that were the case.

Let’s see if these comments would be likely to occur in an egalitarian society.

Comment #1 expresses resentment of the fact that prisoners get a Tufts College degree because, “My kids went to state schools and could only dream of going to Tufts. They had to use student loans, (which wasn't enough) and worked while in school. Now that they work full time, should my kids be expected to support these programs, while they struggle and sacrifice to pay off loans from a far less desirable school ? My kids never killed anyone.”

The difference between “state schools” and Tufts is that graduates of the former end up with lower paying jobs than graduates of Tufts. In our society based of some rich and some poor, the importance of getting into Tufts or an Ivy League school is that it confers a greater chance of getting into the “some rich” category instead of the “some poor” one.

But in an egalitarian society with no rich and no poor, one’s college would not matter as far as one’s standard of living is concerned. In an egalitarian society, nobody is richer than others and everybody who contributes reasonably according to ability can take for free what they need or reasonably desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need (as discussed here.) In an egalitarian society there would not be the kind of resentment of a prisoner graduating from Tufts that this #1 commenter feels.

Comment #2 expresses resentment that prisoners get treated better than veterans. In an egalitarian society, however, veterans who—as undoubtedly virtually all would—contribute reasonably according to ability would have for free what they need or reasonably desired, and would not be worse off in terms of standard of living than any prisoner or any other person for that matter.

Comment #3 expresses anger that the Boston Globe portrays Latino men with a negative stereotype. Such racist stereotypes have been and still are used by the rich upper class to turn white have-nots against non-white have-nots in order to protect class inequality: some rich and some poor. In an egalitarian society, doing anything for the purpose of creating or protecting class inequality would be illegal. Newspapers such as the Boston Globe would be run by egalitarians, not by people such as its current owner—billionaire John Henry. Latino men would be portrayed honestly, not with a negative stereotype.

Comment #4 expresses anger at how the article relies on the racist notion that killing a presumably non-white poor person (a “rival gang member”) is no big deal compared to killing a white and less-poor person (“a lawyer from Wellesley or a blond blue-eye woman studying at Wheaton.”) Again, in an egalitarian society such racist notions would no longer be promoted and would be seriously challenged instead of, as today, allowed to be tacitly accepted as legitimate in a big newspaper like the Boston Globe.

These comments reflect the great amount of anger and resentment in our society, even in response to such things as a “feel good” prison/college program. Capitalist class inequality poisons our relations with each other by injecting this anger and resentment into our relations. Most people try to create relations of mutual aid and concern for one another, and they succeed in this to a large degree, but it is in spite of the fact that we live in a class inequality society that makes it much harder than it ought to be.

Please read here what YOU can do to help make our society be an egalitarian one.