Dr. David Z. Simpson was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where he grew up in a community that, while imperfect, did not mirror the racial hostility and systemic suspicion that define life for so many in the United States. That changed the moment he migrated. Driving through New Jersey with dreadlocks, he was pulled over repeatedly, each stop revealing a subtle but chilling truth: something invisible was working beneath the surface.

Years later, David was unjustly incarcerated for ten years after refusing to cooperate with federal agents who wanted him to help target his childhood friend in a drug sting. He did nothing illegal. Exercising his constitutional right to remain silent and not participate in an entrapment operation, he chose integrity over betrayal. But in an era defined by the so-called “War on Drugs,” where law enforcement was encouraged to produce results at any cost, his refusal to comply was treated as defiance, something to be punished. David became collateral damage in a system that had forgotten its own laws, where silence was mistaken for guilt and conscience was treated as rebellion. His incarceration was not about justice; it was about teaching a lesson to anyone who refused to play by the system’s unwritten rules.

While in prison, David met Garry Okpala, a brilliant jailhouse paralegal who opened his eyes to the hidden machinery of U.S. justice. Together, they studied officers, judges, and prisoners alike, tracing patterns of thought that reached far beyond the walls of any prison. It was there that David recognized what he now calls the root cause, a psychological system that outlived slavery itself, reshaping laws, culture, and behavior to keep dehumanization alive in modern form.

When released, David tried to walk away from it all. But seeing young activists and students fighting for justice from the outside reignited his sense of duty. He realized that while many advocates were tackling the symptoms of injustice, mass incarceration, police violence, racial inequality, few were naming the root cause. He began writing a manifesto to define that cause, but quickly realized the world didn’t need another academic document. It needed a book, something living, urgent, and human.

The Slavery Mindset became that book: a concise, powerful call to awareness and healing. It reveals how an invisible root cause has continued to shape systems of punishment, poverty, and prejudice, and how we can finally dismantle it by confronting what it has done to us all. It uncovers the hidden engine driving modern injustice, showing how a centuries-old design still defines who suffers, who profits, and who remains blind to it. It exposes the unseen cause behind the suffering we call normal, and challenges us to finally face what we’ve inherited. And it confronts the deepest source of inequality, the part we’ve all been taught not to see, calling us to reclaim our humanity from it.

This is not just a book about history. It is a book about now. A mirror, a manual, and a moral awakening, inviting every reader to look deeper, think freer, and help build what freedom was meant to be.

The Slavery Mindset is not just meant to be read. It is meant to be lived.