BLACK PRISONERS SETTING THEMSELVES ON FIRE TO ESCAPE WHITE SUPREMACY

Twelve Black men at Red Onion Prison set themselves aflame to escape racist torture while the warden responds with "no comment". This isn't negligence it's methodical white supremacist dehumanization.

Inside Red Onion State Prison — image via Solitary, Catapult Film Fund

CONTENT WARNING: This article contains descriptions of racist violence, anti-Black state violence, and self-harm in prisons that may be distressing for some readers.

WHEN BLACK PRISONERS ARE SETTING THEMSELVES ON FIRE to escape racism, let’s skip the palatable bureaucratic term of ‘systemic racism’ and call it what it is: white supremacy burning Black bodies.

Let that sink in . . . twelve Black men have deliberately set their own bodies aflame because that seemed like a better option than enduring another day under the ‘care’ of their white guards at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia (The Virginia Defender, 2024).

These twelve human beings chose third-degree burns over the daily psychological burns of racial torture. What the fuck kind of country are we running here?

The state violence against Black Americans isn’t “just a few bad apples” — it’s direct fucking policy, by the numbers: Black Americans are 2.6 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans and receive federal prison sentences 13.4% longer for identical crimes.

And the hatred keeps rising: FBI data shows anti-Black hate crimes leading record highs in 2023, while anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked 300% since October. Anti-Asian violence remains 200% above pre-pandemic levels, and anti-Hispanic incidents rose 18%. And the National Institute of Justice estimates 40% of hate crimes go unreported.

This isn’t “a few bad apples”.
This is a poisoned fucking orchard.

The details from Red Onion would be shocking if they weren’t so repulsively familiar. Guards calling prisoner Ekong Eshiet “Eat-Shit”. Spitting in food. Leaving 27-year-old Demetrius Wallace with untreated burns for three days before bothering to transport him to a hospital. And when he returned? Straight to solitary confinement, where more than two-thirds of Red Onion’s prisoners spend 23 hours a day, sometimes for years.

23 hours a day in total silence and darkness.

The United Nations defines solitary confinement beyond 15 days as torture — flat out fucking torture — under the Nelson Mandela Rules. Yet Red Onion keeps people there for hundreds of days, thousands of days. And that one hour they’re supposedly let out? Do we really think the same animals who waited three days to get Wallace medical care for third-degree burns, the same guards who spit in Eshiet’s food are checking their watches to make sure every prisoner gets their full hour? This isn’t just illegal under international law — it’s sadistic by design.

This isn’t just about one prison perched atop Red Onion Mountain. This is about the United States’ architecture of racial oppression, where prisons serve as modern-day plantations, complete with forced labor and racial hierarchies enforced through violence. According to the Sentencing Project, Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans. And in 12 states, more than half of the prison population is Black.

And this ‘American as apple pie’ home-grown racism isn’t staying home. Like a poisoned orchard export, American-style white supremacy is funding and enabling slaughter and dehumanization worldwide. The same system that sees Black bodies as disposable in Virginia prisons cheers while Palestinian children are bombed in Gaza. The same political machinery that keeps Red Onion operating, floods Sudan with weapons while mouthing empty words about human rights. The same corporations getting rich off prison slave labor are strip-mining the Congo, leaving scorched earth and broken bodies in their wake.

Remember: Red Onion opened in 1998. Not 1898. 1998. When ‘Friends’ was still airing new episodes (sans Black people, may I add), Virginia was christening a new prison that would go on to be cited for human rights violations by both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Progress? That’s what white America calls building new plantations.

The warden’s response to prisoners literally setting themselves on fire tells you everything you need to know about institutional accountability. First denial. Then the classic white supremacist cowardly ‘no comment’. Meanwhile, prisoners are being served maggot-infested food and held in solitary for more than 600 days (The Marshall Project, 2023) — when most European countries cap solitary at 15 days maximum.

The alternatives exist.
America just doesn't want them.
This isn’t negligence — it’s methodical dehumanization.

To the monsters that read this and cry, “But they’re criminals” . . . first of all a massive fuck you. Followed with an equally forceful fuck you. And then finally ending your repulsive racist ‘argument’ with this:

Since when did a criminal conviction become a license for racial torture? Since when did any crime justify forcing someone to choose between setting themselves on fire or enduring endless racial abuse? What crime warrants being called “Eat-Shit”' while guards spit in your food? Show me that law. Show me that sentence. You can’t, because this isn’t about justice — it’s about sadistic white supremacist power.

And this kind of white supremacist ‘logic’ isn’t just prison guard talk — it’s white America’s mother tongue and default setting. This racism isn’t a cancer in the nation’s body — it’s the blood in its veins.

Just ask Native Americans about genocide dressed up as ‘manifest destiny’. Ask Black Americans about slavery rebranded as the prison system. Ask Muslims about ‘national security’ that somehow always means bombing their children. Ask Asian Americans about ‘model minority’ bullshit while their elders are attacked in the streets. Ask immigrants about ‘border security’ while their kids die in cages. Hell, just ask the 74 million people who voted for Trump’s explicit white nationalism and called it “making America great”.

The poison isn’t in the fruit — it’s in the roots of the whole damn tree.

Red Onion isn’t special. It’s just one node in a vast network of similar institutions across the U.S., each one processing Black and Brown bodies through the same machinery of degradation.

This isn’t just about reform anymore. Reform is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. When prisoners are setting themselves on fire to escape racist abuse, we’re way past incremental solutions. We need to seriously talk about abolition.

In the same way our ancestors had to imagine a world without slavery, we need to imagine — and then build — a world without prisons. A world without state-sanctioned murder called “capital punishment”. A world without the machinery of death that puts more guns on our streets than people.

27 states still have the death penalty, disproportionately killing Black and Brown people. Black defendants facing white victims are 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty. We’re not talking about justice here — we’re talking about legal lynching.

The prison-industrial complex isn’t broken — it’s working exactly as designed. With more than two million people locked up, America has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners. Private prison corporations make $5 billion annually from this human cage match. We abolitionists aren’t the ones with radical ideas — the radical idea is thinking we can cage and kill our way to safety.

And while we’re on abolition, let’s talk about guns . . . the same system flooding our streets with weapons is the one militarizing our police. In 2023, American police killed 1,186 people — more than any other developed nation by orders of magnitude. Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans, but we keep hearing that more guns make us safer. Safer for whom?

The abolition movement isn’t about chaos — it’s about transformation.

It’s about investing in education instead of incarceration.
Mental health instead of militarization.
Housing instead of handcuffs.
Prevention instead of punishment.

Countries that have abolished the death penalty, drastically reduced incarceration, and implemented strict gun control don’t have more crime — they have significantly less. Norway keeps 80% of formerly imprisoned people free. Whereas America throws 76% back in cages. The Norwegians are not superhuman — they just chose people over profit.

Critics will say abolition is impossible. But they said the same thing about ending slavery. About civil rights. About same-sex marriage. The impossible becomes inevitable when enough people say enough.

Red Onion’s burning men are showing us that reform is dead. The only way forward is abolition. Total transformation. If we can spend $81 billion annually on prisons, we can spend it on schools. If we can train police in military tactics, we can train communities in conflict resolution. If we can build super-max prisons, we can build super-max mental health facilities.

The question isn’t whether white supremacy is getting worse in America — the data screams that it is. The question is whether we’re finally ready to admit how bad it’s always been.

The flames at Red Onion aren’t new — they’re just illuminating what’s always been there. From Virginia to Gaza, from Sudan to the Congo, American racism isn’t just surviving — it’s metastasizing.

Here’s what we all can do:

• Support prison abolition organizations like Critical Resistance and the Prison Policy Initiative

• Join local anti-prison organizing efforts pushing to close facilities like Red Onion

• Demand your state representatives end solitary confinement and support the HALT Solitary Confinement Act

• Follow and amplify the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people fighting for their basic human rights

• Contribute to prisoner advocacy groups and bail funds in your area

• Push your local government to redirect police and prison funding toward community services, housing, and mental healthcare.

The time for passive witness is over. These men are burning. And if we look away now, we’re as complicit as that warden with his “no comment”.