Lauryn Hill Jail: Fugees Member Says Racism To Blame For Her Inability To Pay Taxes to IRS

R&B star Lauryn Hill has had a while to ruminate on her three-month prison sentence stemming from her failure to pay taxes on $1.8 million in earnings to the IRS. Her realization in the month since her May sentencing: Historic racism is to blame. 

The full entry onto Hill's blog is rather lengthy but here's the clip where she came to her conclusion: 

"I shuddered during sentencing when I kept hearing the term 'make the IRS whole' . . . make the IRS whole, knowing that I got into these very circumstances having to deal with the very energies of inequity and resistance that created and perpetuated these savage inequalities. The entire time, I thought, who has made black people whole?! Who has made recompense for stealing, imposing, lying, murdering, criminalizing the traumatized, taking them against their wills, destroying their homes, dividing their communities, 'trying' to steal their destinies, their time, stagnating their development, I could go on and on. Has America, or any of the nations of the world guilty of these atrocities, ever made black people or Africa whole or do they continue to sit on them, control them, manipulate them, cage them, rob them, brutalize them, subject them to rules that don't apply to all? Use language, veiled coercion, and psychological torment like invisible fences to keep them locked into a pattern of limitation and therefore control by others. You have to remain focused to cease from rage."

The post continues, stating that the IRS is persecuting her so that it can distract from the crimes it committed against blacks in the past(?):

"Why would a system, 'well intentioned,' wait until breakdown or incarceration to consider rehabilitation, after generations of institutionally inflicted trauma and abuse on a people? To me it is obvious that the accumulation of generational trauma and abuse have created the very behaviors the system tries to punish, by providing no sufficient outlets for the victims of institutional terror. Clearly, the institution seeks to hide its own criminal history at the expense and wholeness of the abused, who 'acting out' from years of abuse and mistreatment, reflect the very aggression that they were exposed to."

The money owed comes from the period in Hill's career between 2005 and 2007. Since then Hill's attorney says the performer has paid nearly $970,000 of what was owed. At the time, Hill blamed her inability to pay on her separation from the the music industry. Hill announced that she had signed a deal with Sony Worldwide Entertainment in April.