Pubdate: Thu, 28 Aug 2014
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Ngaio Bealum

ON RACE, ARRESTS, MARIJUANA AND 'THE NEW JIM CROW'

In Sacramento, Black People Are Arrested 5.7 Times More Often Than White People

Are marijuana arrests really a racial thing?

- -Mike Green

Good question. This can be a tricky subject. Let's start with some 
numbers: According to a report from the Drug Policy Alliance 
("Arresting Blacks for Marijuana in California" 
www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/ArrestingBlacks.pdf), white people use 
marijuana at a higher rate than blacks, but black people are 
consistently arrested for marijuana possession at a higher rate than 
white people.

In Sacramento, the report says that while black people are just a 
little more than 10 percent of the total population, they are 38 
percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession. Overall, 
black people are arrested 5.7 times more often than white people. 
These numbers are from 2008. Arrest rates may have changed, but I doubt it.

Nationally, black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested 
for marijuana than white people 
(www.aclu.org/billions-dollars-wasted-racially-biased-arrests#mjanalysis).

Let's remember that racism was one of the primary factors leading to 
the prohibition of marijuana. Harry Anslinger, the man leading the 
charge for cannabis prohibition in the late 1930s, said this: "Most 
marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and 
entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and 
marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual 
relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that 
causes insanity, criminality, and death-the most violence-causing 
drug in the history of mankind."

Whew. Racist much? We still find this completely false attitude about 
marijuana causing violence today. According to the autopsy, Michael 
Brown had marijuana in his system when he was shot and killed in 
Ferguson, Mo. Many pundits and bloggers have used this information as 
a reason to suggest that the presence of weed in his system made 
Brown more prone to violence. Any pot smoker will tell you that 
marijuana and violence don't go together. Hell, weed and violence 
don't even like each other. Yet the myth that pot causes violence endures.

Maybe I am tripping, but it seems to me that legalizing marijuana 
would help end racism, or at least the racial disparities in our 
prison system. Putting someone in jail for marijuana makes no sense 
and is a waste of resources. Giving law enforcement an excuse to 
profile and go after people of color (e.g., New York City's 
"stop-and-frisk" policy) is not a good idea.

Listen: 61 percent of the people in jail for drug offenses are black 
or Hispanic, even though all races use and sell drugs at about the 
same rate. I bet that if the New York Police Department was to stop 
and frisk all of the stockbrokers on Wall Street, they would run out 
of room in the jailhouse.

So, you tell me: Are marijuana arrests racially motivated? In her 
book The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander argues that the "war 
on some drugs" is really just state-sanctioned racism. In her words: 
"We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned 
it." I think she's right.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom