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How I Went From Prep School to Prison
Brandon Ralph
Being accepted into Exeter allowed me to escape my violent, crack-ridden neighborhood in Brooklyn. And yet, I somehow ended up in prison like so many other young black men.
I never dreamt about being in prison during my incarceration. Every once in a while, I dreamt that one or more of my friends (from inside) and I were hanging out at one of the places I missed and remembered—New York City, the Exeter campus, the recording studio. But to my recollection, I never had a dream that took place in prison. The most frequent destination in the dream state was the house in which I spent my adolescence, on Legion Street in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Brownsville, with the help of the times (i.e. the proliferation of crack cocaine in every major city in the US during the mid-1980s), acquired an Enter-at-Your-Own-Risk reputation. The so-called luxuries that were afforded to drug dealers (cars, jewelry, and clothes) came with a price—the seemingly inexorable final destinations of prison and/or violent death.
I would lay awake in bed, numb to the gunfire just outside my window, counting the shots like sheep.
Notwithstanding the statistics (one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are currently incarcerated within the criminal-justice system), the promise and proximity of drug dealing is oftentimes too influential to be overcome by logic and intuition.
For as long as I could remember, being from the city was associated with an innate swagger, a defense mechanism built on skepticism and bravado. Keep your guard up! Don’t be nobody’s fool! That kind of thinking. The durability of youth in the 1980s in Brownsville and other similar places was replaced with a mentality that was as empowering as it was impossible to bear.
Brownsville! Never ran… never will.
Do-or-die Bed-Stuy.
Gangs were born and buried throughout Brooklyn and the other boroughs in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Back then, however, disputes were predominantly settled with fists. The wealth (or at least the illusion of wealth) that was created in the 1980s also brought with it a bloody, news-making urban warfare, where a worst-case scenario was not a night in a county jail cell and being admonished by an infirmary nurse for your involvement in a brawl. The violence that began to define the era was a game changer, one that required incredulous family members to “please identify the body.”
I remember sitting on my bedroom floor in our second-story apartment watching the evening news. The scenes of violence in Beirut (even in snowy black and white) were enough to leave a deep impression on my young psyche. How can people live there? I wondered. Why don’t they move? Later that night, I would lay awake in bed, numb to the gunfire just outside my window, counting the shots like sheep.
Amateur Hour at the White House
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Airports From Hell
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
How I Fell in Love in Prison
John Forté is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and producer from Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, he is a classically trained violinist who is known for his work with The Fugees. Forté was granted a commutation by President George W. Bush in 2008 after having served more than seven years of a 14-year federal prison sentence for a drug offense.
First Day Out of Prison
John Forté is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and producer from Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, he is a classically trained violinist who is known for his work with The Fugees. Forté was granted a commutation by President George W. Bush in 2008 after having served more than seven years of a 14-year federal prison sentence for a drug offense.
Did your time, but please put that expensive (someone paid for it) education to good use.
I hope you make the connection that the business of drugs; dealers, smugglers, growers, cartels, pushers, users, is a nasty business.
Success is cool. You have all the tools to make it.
I enjoyed this article, but it left me a little disappointed. There is no "how" you went from school to prison -- the article seems to be more of a memoir of your childhood than anything else.
Ditto. This was one of the better essays on the beast. So what do you plan to do now? What are your next steps? Keep us updated!
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How will you use your "voice"? What do you think should be done our about this all consuming problem? How do you think this should be managed?
In my sphere while you were out, it became a black& white problem and no longer an urban thing. However sadly, black on black shootings are exclusive. Heroin and cocaine-crack in particular are toxins that most with little to do can't resist.
I find your pardon curious. Certainly the drug problem was overlooked and so flourished over the past 8 years, our current condition portrays that clearly. My city has multiple supersized methodone clinics. Actually this was the single largest business expansion on the main City corridor that leads to my suburbs. Just lovely...
I look forward to hearing more from you and the positive changes you will no doubt bring to the world through your voice, knowledge, history and spiritual transformation. You are an inspiration to me.
"Hustlin' crack don't make you bigger..."
As a fan of your music... I am glad that you are free now. Wow, of all presidents to pardon you... Bush? Well, all that matters now is you're out of the beast.
Can we get a Cowboys Pt. 2 with what's left of the Outsidaz?
Even William F. Buckly thought the war on drugs had too much downside to continue. Individuals like Mr. Forte don't deserve to lose their freedoms for such long periods of time. 30 days in jail is long enough for any non-violent offender who hasn't hurt or stolen from another. The court system in place ruins lives and places individuals in deeper poverty without benefiting them. Punishment should fit the crime. Forte is an exception because he still has a chance to thrive after his incarceration. If he wasn't artistic and had to work a normal job, he'd have trouble gaining employment in anything that would pay a living wage. I hope he uses his fame to try to get the populous to realize how broken our "justice" system is in relation to non-violent offenders. Welcome back to the free world Mr. Forte.
I side with the others in that we're missing the specifics that got you in prison. We've got it up to Exeter, your story is good and your prose style, compelling, but the following short paragraph does no justice to the key component of your memoir:
"Despite my awareness of the daunting statistics and the gifts I had been given, I wound up in prison-a young, black man from a loving family, educated, and who should have known better. I fell. Hard."
I'm not saying this to try to guilt you or anything like that, we're just missing the story that your headline proposes. I look forward to reading more of your work, and I hope you will put your prodigious talents to work changing the culture of drugs and materialism that has proven so destructive to so many.
The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget
Until you can look into the mirror and say Iam an addict and thats why I ended up in the joint, you are at risk.
The rest is fluff.
There's no question that being an addict is the reason why trouble has come Raptor, but the rest is only fluff because nobody wants to change the policies set so many years ago by people who didn't understand addiction or the failures of their policies. We have to take responsibility for our actions, but that doesn't mean the system isn't severely flawed.
Welcome home John Forte :)
You should still be in prison.
:Remember it's all who you know. :What an example.
HTuttle: Your taxes would still be paying for him if he was still in. Instead, he's actually taking care of his own bills again. I'm not even going to guess which way you'd rather have it.
Thank you.
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