Answer this, Lee Atwater laid out what his southern strategy was. Was that racist? It sure sounds racist to me.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was very bipartisan. About half the no votes were the Congressional Black Caucus. The media was totally used to make the case. From the Wiki:
Crack cocaine hit the streets of the United States in 1985. A decline in legitimate inner-city employment opportunities led some to sell drugs, most notably crack. The unsettled and developing crack markets created a wave of violence in many urban neighborhoods of the United States.[39] The DEA began lobbying congress on behalf of Reagan's War on Drugs initiative by courting media outlets in an attempt to win public support for the War on Drugs. Robert Strutman, head of the New York City DEA office recalled, "In order to convince Washington, I needed to make drugs a national issue and quickly. I began lobbying efforts and I used the media. The media was only too willing to cooperate."[40]In June 1986, Newsweek called crack the biggest story since the Vietnam War and Watergate, and in August, Time termed crack "the issue of the year."[41] Stories written about crack featured terms like "welfare queen," "crack babies" and "gangbangers," racially targeted terms. "Welfare queen" and "Predator criminals" were among the most frequently-used terms, which had been coined by Reagan during his presidential campaign.[41] The sociologists Craig Reinerman and Harry Levine stated, "Crack was a godsend to the right.... It could not have appeared at a more politically opportune moment."[42]
Race and the war on drugs - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
For CO, here is an article on it from the 90s, https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1141&context=law_urbanlaw.
The crack/powder cocaine penalty dichotomy is yet another significant example of the heavier burden that people of color have carried during the last decade's war on drugs.' 3 The existence of this burden is borne out by the government's own statistics: although African-Americans represent only 12% of the illegal drug users in this country - almost equal to their percentage of the population - they comprise 44% of all drug arrests.14Under the old law from 1986, one could carry 100 times the amount of powder cocaine and get the same sentence as crack. So in other words, one could carry enough powder to easily be a dealer and still receive the same sentence as a person who had just enough crack for themselves. But there is nothing to see here.
Here are some more stats:
- Blacks weren’t just punished more severely, they were arrested far more frequently. From 1980 to 2014, the rate of drug arrests for accused black cocaine and narcotics offenders was at least twice the rate of whites, and it was often much higher than that. FBI drug arrest data combines crack and powder cocaine offenses. Heroin and other opioids are classified as narcotics.
- Hispanics also have been prosecuted on federal crack charges at a higher rate than whites, though the disparity is not as great as between whites and blacks. The FBI does not track drug arrests by ethnic group.
- The racial disparity in drug arrests continues today. Even though heroin and prescription opioids are more deadly, there were nearly four times more arrests for cocaine than opioid drugs in 2016. In fact, far more blacks (85,640) were arrested for cocaine than whites were arrested for heroin and other opioids (66,120) that year.
- Blacks in 21 states were arrested at a rate at least three times higher than whites for narcotics and cocaine offenses combined in 2016. In Iowa, where black residents constitute about 4% of the state's population, blacks were more than 11 times as likely as whites to be arrested for cocaine or narcotics offenses. In Vermont, the ratio was more than nine times higher for blacks.
An unfair system arrested millions of blacks, urged compassion for whites
A racial double standard has been hard-wired into the nation’s drug laws and criminal justice system since the heyday of the crack epidemic and continues today.www.app.com
Why do we think we can arrest our way out of a drug epidemic? Addictions need treatment, we shouldn't be throwing the average addict in with murderers and rapists. But we have for quite a while.
I can't let CO's "racism of low expectations" go unmentioned. CO uses southern plantation owner 101 in his argumentation, we need a firm hand on the Black to keep him in line or he'll be good for nothing. Yet CO wants us to believe there is nothing racist at all about that idea. I challenge anyone to look back at the writings of the plantation owners on the subject, they will see CO's concept in writing 160 years ago.
Even the article confirms it’s as I suspected, it’s a rural v urban disparity. The article points out that black folks are more likely to get popped selling drugs out in the open in easily arrestable situations.
I don’t know of any reasonable person who doesn’t believe that White Privilege exists. It’s the “what do we do about it” and “what is the depth of it” that is subject to arguments amongst reasonable people. And the more that everything is blamed on it is to tune out more reasonable people.
It’s meaningless. And the entire article is nonsense. I’ve spent considerable time in numerous courts and zero of what’s written in that article is true. As I’ve said before for minor charges the plea deals are always predetermined and race is never a factor. For felonies the issue isn’t race it’s money. Do you have the money to get a lawyer to bond reduction hearing. Do you have a lawyer to threaten trial to do discovery etc. it’s always about money. Now a lack of money can have a disparate impact on black communities for sure. But i have never once seen an ounce of racism in the courts.
There is a surprising lack of black participation in combat arms positions, period. I observed this anecdotally from my experiences in the early to late 2000s. This is true across officer and enlisted ranks. But I’d love for you to explain how Racism! is the source. Are you sure that recruiters at depots are dissuading young black men from enlisting into the infantry or armor?
Got it. I've actually never done a thing in the minor system. But i can tell you in visiting at least twenty courts i've never seen an act of racism - and sentencing and plea deals and all of it are always out in the open on dockets with a hundred people there. and it doesn't matter if it's child support dockets, misd, or felonies. the only difference is those with private lawyers and those without. and that's money. what's more where i've been the prosecutors are handling soooooooooooooo many files. they spend fifteen minutes looking at it and give everyone the same deal unless the person has a ton of priors
Total nonsense and offensive to be honest. 1) photos of the person. 90 percent of the deals are made without the prosecutor ever seeing the defendant. 2) the top prosecutor in both the city and county here in the most dangerous city in America are both black. 3) the jury pool mirrors the community so in the city of Stl it’s half black. 4) everything is done in open court. To be heard by all. Do you know the uproar that would arise if blacks were getting shittier deals 5) a decent percentage of judges are black. You don’t think they’d say something.
There is no doubt that there may be a perception that learning skills outside of combat arms is correlated to post service success. Infantry skills, other than the raw leadership skills one must develop to succeed there, don’t parlay into post service professions. Learning logistics or other skills is certainly advantageous for that.
Combat Arms are mainly the maneuver branches, namely Infantry and Armor and Special Forces. Definitions also include artillery and aviation.
I think these articles leave out an inordinate amount of variables that go into sentencing, including the exhaustive pre-sentencing forms and data. I think there are people that really want to find racism, and those people aren’t helping anything.
I’ll just throw it here randomly marv. But in my opinion blacks historically being deprived through slavery, oppression and racism of the same opportunities to amass wealth and to participate in the education and economic systems as whites is far more impactful today, today, than the color of skin. Ending racism is far less salient to me than achieving economic equality to open more doors. The latter is the larger, more prevalent problem.
Answer me first. You pointed to a bipartisan bill as evidence of Reagan’s bigotry. Do you retract that?
I think it’s far more prevalent in employment discrimination, loans, credit, etc than courts
Is? I don't know. I believe people can change. But I won't dispute he took part in a racist bill in the 1970s. But I'm not going to oppose you or anyone else calling Biden that. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk...mise-segregationists-he-fought-their-n1021626. Biden was quite willing to use bigotry if it advanced him. I think the same of Reagan. I don't know if either was racist. A non-racist can use a racist act to further themselves or a cause. I am uncomfortable at best with Biden's history and that's one reason I didn't consider voting for him in the primary. But now he's running against someone who makes me far more uncomfortable.
