Race and the drug war

Race and the Drug War: Same Story, Different Day

Despite repeated denials among conservatives racial disparity in every facet of American life continues to exist. No matter what social indicator you choose – education, life expectancy, overall health, housing, wealth and income, and incarceration – black people by far and away fare the worst compared to whites.

As for wealth and income, the gaps between blacks and whites are as great as they were about 40 years ago. In 2006, the per capita income for whites was $30,431; for blacks it was $17,564 (black per capita income as a percent of whites was 58%; in 1967 it was 54%); the median family income for whites in 2006 was $65,856; for blacks it was $38,520 (median black family income as a percent of whites was 58% versus 51% in 1967); median household wealth in 2004 dollars was $36,100 for whites; for blacks it was a measly $300. An astonishing 73% of black students attended segregated schools in 2005 (defined as schools where at least half were minorities); not much different than in 1968 when the percentage was 77 (http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=23). Blacks are still far more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where the majority of their fellow residents are also black – what some writers have called “hyper-segregated” neighborhoods (see Massey and Denton’s book American Apartheid, Harvard University Press, 1993 and more recently Paul Street’s Segregated Schools, Routledge, 2005). A recent study showed that living in such segregated areas result in higher rates of “preterm birth” or premature birth which in turn has been shown to be related to many problems for children in terms of healthy development, school success, and other outcomes (American Journal of Epidemiology, 2008: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/167/11/1295).

Life expectancy at birth in 2005 was 75.7 for white males compared to 69.5 for black males; for females it was 80.8 for whites versus 76.5 for blacks. Educational attainment for blacks is one area where the gap has decreased significantly. Whereas in 1960 only 20% of blacks had a high school diploma or equivalent (compared to 43% of whites), in 2007 that had risen to 82% for blacks versus 86% for whites; but blacks are still much less likely than whites to graduate from college (18.5% versus 29% for whites). Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to live in poverty – in 2006 24% of blacks were living in poverty compared to just 10% of whites; one-third of black children lived in poverty in 2006 compared to just 13.6% of whites (these and other data are found at: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth/poverty.html).

Not surprisingly, blacks have a much higher unemployment rate. As of April, 2009 the black unemployment rate stood at about 15% compared to 8% for whites (Bureau of Labor Statistics - http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm). It has been predicted that by mid-2010 the black unemployment level will reach 18%, while more than half of black teenagers will be unemployed (http://epi.3cdn.net/3138bb119fa2e1d286_aqm6bnqto.pdf).

More data could easily be brought forth here to reinforce the fact that blacks still occupy a secondary status in American society, despite years of civil rights struggles. When it comes to incarceration and the “war on drugs” it would appear that there has been a concerted effort (whether this has been intended is irrelevant) to keep the black population in this secondary status. Such an effort can be traced to the days of slavery and even for about 100 years after slavery officially ended, at least in the South (see Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name; Anchor Books, 2009: http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/).

Consider the following data: Overall incarceration rates (2006): White male = 736; Black male = 4,789; lifetime chances of going to prison (2001): White male = 6%; Black male = 32%; arrest rates for drugs (2007): White = 476; Black = 1,721 (Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/correct.htm; Human Rights Watch, “Decades of Disparity” - http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0309web_1.pdf).

The racial disparity of the drug war has been fully documented during the past 20-30 years, as a simple Google search will demonstrate (literally hundreds of books and articles have been written about this). What the research clearly shows is two glaring undeniable facts: every major piece of legislation during the past 100 years concerning drugs has criminalized those drugs used mostly by racial minorities and during the past 20-30 years Congress has been repeatedly told that the current drug war targets mostly Blacks and Hispanics, yet has done nothing to change this.

The most recent study is by Dorothy Marie Provine in Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Citing the many studies that show few racial differences in illegal drug usage, she notes that apparently legislators ignored this when it passed what has become the most racist legislation in the history of drug laws: the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 that distinguished between crack and powder cocaine, with possession or sales of crack (used almost exclusively by blacks) receiving far greater penalties (this is the famous 100:1 ratio, where it takes 100 grams of powder cocaine (used mostly by whites) to receive the same kind of sentence as 1 gram of crack). Congress was fully aware of the fact that such laws would target black people. In fact, as far back as 1967 the Katzenbach Commission brought to the attention of Congress the racial disparities of mandatory sentences, after which such sentences were dropped. Obviously Congress suffered from historical amnesia when it passed the tough laws of the 1980s.

After more than 20 years, even with the heightened awareness of the impact of the drug war on blacks and other minorities, Congress still does nothing (even within the Obama Administration there does not seem to be a concerted effort to overturn some of the harsh drug laws). The drug war’s impact has reached directly into minority neighborhoods with devastating results. A recent book by Todd Clear documents the impact of mass incarceration (brought about mostly by the drug war) on these communities. He shows that “get tough on crime” polices in recent years have actually contributed to higher crime rates in these communities. He shows through the presentation of empirical evidence that there has been a reduction of what is known as “social capital” (education, skills, etc.) within these communities which in turn would normally contribute to positive outcomes for the youth of these communities. Also within these communities there has been a decline in various “social support” networks (strong family ties, etc.), higher levels of unemployment (reaching as high as more than 50% in some areas), a decline in “marriageable men” (with so many going to prison) and children without adult men in their lives (not to mention the fact that the incarceration rate for women has risen faster than for men during the past 20 years, especially for drugs), with the predictable rise in youth crime, gangs and drug use (Clear, Imprisoned Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse, Oxford University Press, 2007).

Through an historical lens we can clearly see that the certain aspects of the caste system of slavery have continued to the present day, given the mass incarceration of so many black people. The aforementioned book by Douglas Blackmon bears noting. His book documents a system of “convict leasing” that occurred throughout the South until World War II. This was a system whereby blacks were summarily arrested by county sheriffs on either minor charges (especially vagrancy) or no charges at all, fined by local Justices of the Peace and when the “offenders” could not pay their fines (and few could), they were paid by either local land owners or corporations (such as the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railway Company), who in turn coerced the offenders to sign contracts to work for periods of up to a year or more. For all practical purposes, it was slavery as these former slaves worked under the cruelest conditions in mines, factories and farms, with many shackled and whipped if they did not work hard enough. Many escaped, but were captured by deputy sheriffs and various citizens, just like they were runaway slaves.

Today thousands of blacks are arrested on drug offenses and sentenced to many years in prison where they are simply warehoused and forgotten about, while their families back home suffer. Such mass incarceration of black people is simply a new form of apartheid, a continuation of the caste system that was supposed to be abolished with the passage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendment of the Constitution.