In California due to prison over crowding and a policy called realignment, many sentences are now served in county jail. Recently I came across this very funny jail memoir in The Newsweek.
I anticipated a very violent repercussion for lying. But their reaction was totally unexpected.
On race:
I knew that I had to join the Peckerwoods, a notorious white supremacist gang. But I am by birth half-Jewish. I have a Jewish last name too, so I was fearful.
My plan was to pretend I was German since my last name is Yiddish, so pretty similar sounding. It's probably not politically correct to say this, but I also don't look like a stereotypical Jewish person, at least in the eyes of neo-Nazis.
I also think my image played into it. They saw a crackhead from Skid Row who weighed 130 pounds and just didn't connect that with a Jewish guy. So I got away with it. They believed I was just a German-American. They had no suspicion whatsoever.
For about three or four weeks, I played along. But I soon realized there was no need to. I never heard anything really racist or antisemitic.
There was another man named Lou. He was probably 50 years old, and every day, he would get a different meal than everyone else—a special meal in a blue box—and people lined up to buy it.
I was curious. I looked in the garbage and saw there was Hebrew lettering on this blue box so I knew Lou was probably Jewish. I asked Lou if he was, and he said yes, that's why he gets the kosher meal.
I said: "I'm Jewish too, actually." He didn't really care. I said I had told the shot caller—a kind of gang leader—and all the guys that I was German when I came in, and now I'm thinking about getting the kosher meal.
I asked what he thought the consequences would be of revealing that I was Jewish. He said: "Oh, well, they're not going to care that you're Jewish, but they are going to care that you lied. So, I would just go talk to the shot caller privately and work this out."
I expected a very violent repercussion for lying. There are violent repercussions for everything, from not washing your hands after using the bathroom to getting caught sharing food with another race.
I talked to the shot caller. He was pretty angry that I lied, but at the same time, he said: "Listen, I'm half Armenian. I'm not even fully white. We don't really care. These are just the rules and we have to follow them.
"As the shot caller, if it gets out that I'm not enforcing these rules, I'll get stabbed on the yard.
"You lied. You got to come clean to all the boys, and it's not a big deal. Just when you get the kosher meal, make sure that white guys get preference over buying it. If no one white wants to buy the meal, then you can sell it to the other races."
On managerialism:
Violence is highly organized in the California prison system. I was in county jail, but it's just as bad as prison, if not worse.
If you get into an altercation with someone, you're not allowed to fight them. You have to go to your shot caller, and he has to go to his shot caller, and the shot callers must decide whether you're allowed to fight in a very controlled environment.
[...]
I had to fight people for breaking very stupid rules, such as sharing food with a Black person—a rule that I think is ridiculous. To be honest, my shot caller thought it was ridiculous too. He told me personally that he shared food with Black people all the time; he just had to keep it secret.
[...]
It's Kafkaesque; there's some kind of bureaucratic overwatch going on and you don't even know if it exists or not, but you just have to follow these dumb rules.
A shot caller is your gang leader in jail. This is not the leader of the entire gang but the leader in your pod, meaning your dorm.
Every gang has a shot caller, and then that jail has a head shot caller, and then the whole prison system has a single shot caller somewhere at the top that is this Wizard of Oz-type overlord who no one ever really sees but somehow enforces the rules.
On yarmulke:
I'm not a practicing Jew; I never was, and no one in my family really is. But when you get the kosher meal, they also give you a yarmulke for some reason.
When the other inmates saw the yarmulke, they were mesmerized by this magical Jewish hat. The people who ran the world wore these hats, they thought, and now they were around one in a jail cell.
The Mexican shot caller would request to wear it when he gambled to bring him financial luck. This started sort of a buzz in the jail, and eventually, lots of people were requesting to wear it. Even neo-Nazis requested to wear it when they were gambling.
I asked them to treat it with respect, not because I am religious, but I thought: "My ancestors were religious. Don't be disrespectful."
The amount of respect they had for this yarmulke was actually disturbing; the fact that a Nazi with swastika tattoos would be so polite about a Jewish yarmulke.
On tolerance towards the Jews:
Once it came out that I was Jewish, I experienced zero antisemitic hate. It was more of a fascination. A lot of these people had never met a Jewish person. They pictured Jewish people as owning banks and companies and potentially even the jail.
So when they saw this Skid Row homeless addict who was Jewish, a lot of light bulbs went off about their preconceived ideas. Immediately, they asked: "What are you doing here? Can't you make a phone call? Don't you know a lawyer?"
I said: "No, I'm Jewish. My dad was a heroin addict carpenter. Not all Jews are what you think they are."
It opened up a lot of playful conversations with these people. They were fascinated with the concept that Jews were lawyers, so I started getting a lot of requests to consult people on their cases.
I had to tell them: "Listen, I'm a carpenter crackhead homeless guy. I'm not a lawyer."
They didn't care; they wanted to go over their cases with me. There was almost some soft antisemitism, but it mostly was playful and fanciful obsession and inquiry. They thought I had mystical powers.
[...]
I have stayed in touch with some of the people in jail. Not all white people were Nazis. In fact, a small minority identified as neo-Nazis; most just identified as Peckerwoods. I've kept in touch with both.
On demographics as destiny:
I talked to Lou about it, and he said that there used to be some problems for Jews, but in the end, the white gangs have such low numbers that they don't really care. They needed people.
