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July 11 - September 25, 2020
The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.
Until 1988, one year of imprisonment had been the maximum for possession of any amount of any drug.
Today, the most common use of SWAT teams is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home. In fact, in some jurisdictions drug warrants are served only by SWAT teams—regardless of the nature
“if you take one dealer off the street, he’ll be replaced within an hour.” Many also admit that a predictable consequence of breaking up one drug ring is a slew of violence as others fight for control of the previously stabilized market.
The conventional wisdom—that “get tough” tactics are a regrettable necessity in poor communities of color and that efficiency requires the drug war to be waged in the most vulnerable neighborhoods—turns out to be, as many have long suspected, nothing more than wartime propaganda, not sound policy.
The justification for the implicit doublespeak—“we do not racial-profile; we just stop people based on race”—can be explained in part by the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence.
Few Americans today recognize mass incarceration for what it is: a new caste system thinly veiled by the cloak of colorblindness.
The child poverty rate is actually higher today than it was in 1968.41 Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that is with affirmative action!
If the caste dimensions of mass incarceration were better understood and the limitations of cosmetic diversity were better appreciated, the existence of black police chiefs and black officers would be no more encouraging today than the presence of black slave drivers and black plantation owners hundreds of years ago.
