The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials)

by Heather McGhee

For decades before policy changes in 2010, this sentencing disparity was about one hundred to one. Over the last twenty years, however, a striking change has taken place. Getting locked up over drugs and related property crimes has become more and more common among white people and less so among Black folks. A primary factor in this shift is, as The New York Times wrote, “Mostly white and politically conservative counties have continued to send more drug offenders to prison, reflecting the changing geography of addiction. While crack cocaine addiction was centered in cities, opioid and meth addiction are ravaging small communities” in largely white locales. The “pathology” long ascribed to urban communities as integral and immutable characteristics of Black life (drug addiction, property crimes to support a habit, broken families) has now moved, with deindustrialization, into the suburbs and the countryside. By 2018, an estimated 130 people were dying every day from opioid overdoses, and over 10 million people were abusing prescription opioids.