Pubdate: Wed, 28 Nov 2012
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Copyright: 2012 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Larry Gabriel
Column: Stir It Up

JIM CROW'S DRUG WAR

Why the War on Drugs Is a War Against Black People

Attorney Michelle Alexander has been shaking things up across the
nation over the past two years, yet you may not have heard of her. Her
book, The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness, takes on race and the War on Drugs in ways few people
would dare to approach.

The point of her book is that there is a new Jim Crow system that
traps many African-Americans in a permanent underclass. That system is
driven by the War on Drugs which causes many young people to be
stigmatized by felony records - for a victimless crime - that keep
them from employment, education and housing.

"The arguments and rationalizations that have been trotted out in
support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms
have changed and evolved, but the outcome has remained largely the
same. ... Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system
to label people of color 'criminals' and then engage in all of the
practices we supposedly left behind.

Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in
nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against
African Americans."

Alexander, a former ACLU lawyer and now associate professor of law at
Ohio State University, was a key player in convincing the NAACP to
call for the end of the War on Drugs at its national convention in
2011. Last year, she spoke to members of the Michigan Legislature,
which led Republican Rep. Rick Olson to begin writing legislation (not
yet introduced) that would legalize marijuana in Michigan. This
Sunday, she will be the keynote speaker at Central United Methodist
Church's Eighth Annual Peace and Justice Banquet, a fundraiser for the
church's progressive work in the community.

"We need occasions where the people who are fighting for peace and
justice can gather in a place where they know they are not alone,"
says the Rev. Ed Rowe, pastor at Central United. "It's a gathering of
unions and peace networks and people fighting for everything from
ecological issues to those trying to eradicate white racism.

It looks like the struggle continues.

Defeating the emergency manager law is one occasion where we know our
efforts together had impact, but if we think for one minute we can
stop working because of one victory, we are badly mistaken."

Rowe is not advocating for drug use, but he is advocating for justice,
and it doesn't take long when reading The New Jim Crow to understand
why justice is not served by the drug war. The War on Drugs is mainly
conducted as a war on black and brown people.

A study of New York drug arrests from 1997 to 2006 by sociologist
Harry Levine and drug policy activist Deborah Small found that
18-to-25-year-old whites are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to
smoke marijuana, yet blacks were five times and Hispanics three times
more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.

Once arrested, blacks and Hispanics have a higher conviction rate and
go to jail with longer sentences than whites.

According to
information on the online NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: "five
times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet
African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times
the rate of whites" and "African Americans represent 12 percent of
the total population of drug users, but 38 percent of those arrested
for drug offenses, and 59 percent of those in state prison for a drug 
offense."

This is no accident.

Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition and a retired 30-year Maryland police veteran, is another
activist who helped shape the NAACP policy.

I have quoted him in past columns saying that police seek out drug
offenders in urban neighborhoods because it is easier to find them and
they don't have the means to defend themselves as well as whites in
more affluent neighborhoods. He adds that if police actually pursued
drug arrests in affluent neighborhoods there would be political
pressure to stop law enforcement from doing that.

The result is that young white drug users are far less likely to
suffer the stigma of a drug conviction and prison term. The result in
urban neighborhoods is devastating. Families are broken apart when a
member goes to jail. Sometimes the loss of a breadwinner throws the
family into poverty.

Educations are interrupted or ended.

When an offender's sentence is served, he is dumped back into the
community with no skills, unable to get a job or government aid for
education or housing, and there is a high chance that he will become a
repeat offender.

"I think that people think that the struggle related to Jim Crow and
the racist system is behind us, that we won that victory in the '60s,"
says Rowe. "We've simply changed venues.

We figured out another way to create a race-based caste system that
puts people in prison, on parole, locks them out of getting to vote,
out of jobs, out of the ability to buy a home. Jim Crow is happening
in our cities right now."

This is a key issue right now in Detroit, where voters recently passed
Proposal M, which legalizes possession and use of as much as 1 ounce
of marijuana by adults 21 and older.

Elected officials and police have not said much about it, but what we
have heard has been against the provision.

This is a turning point in the War on Drugs. While public opinion has
changed to the point where polls show a plurality of the public
supports marijuana legalization and regulation, the public is still
uneasy about other drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth. It could be
that showing how a regulated marijuana market works will create a path
for turning around policies on other drugs.

The biggest problems caused by drugs are gangs and violence, both of
which are byproducts of the fact that drugs are illegal. Most
supporters of legalization of all drugs believe they should be
considered a public health issue, not a criminal one.
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