Joan M answers “Serious question: If blacks (and...”

Jeremiah asked this question about The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness:

Serious question: If blacks (and minorities in general) are disproportionately charged for drug offenses, why don't they stop using/selling drugs?

Joan M My guess is: for the same reason white people don't stop using/selling drugs. …moreMy guess is: for the same reason white people don't stop using/selling drugs. (less)

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Noah As a nonviolent individual who consumes elements of 'black culture' daily, I can attest that this is not a cause for the issues you are speaking of, b As a nonviolent individual who consumes elements of 'black culture' daily, I can attest that this is not a cause for the issues you are speaking of, but that is only anecdotal so I'll give more empirical data. White people consume more 'black culture' than black people do. If what you're saying was true, wouldn't that affect white people in the same way? Going back to your first sentence, you were asking about the reasons why people of color are more likely to distribute drugs. Making it out as if you were merely stating a statistic directly contradicts your earlier comment and comes off as being made in bad faith as you've stated,

"the question should be : Why black people do not stop SELLING (to distribute) drugs?"

It seems like you are aware that this is due to extrinsic factors. If I were to entertain the notion that this is due to 'black culture', that would still be a product of systemic racism. Reaganomics, Jim Crow, redlining, and school choice have all been huge contributors in making and keeping black Americans in poverty. If you don't believe me you can simply look back at objective history:

After the civil war, slave states still needed to rely on slavery for their economy to prosper so they exploited a loophole in our 13th amendment to be able to still have slaves. They made it incredibly easy to send black people to prison in order to use them as slave labor again. Private prisons began forming. Due to the fact that private prisons make money from this free labor, they do everything in their power to make sure that they have as many prisoners as possible and that these prisoners wind up back in prison because it is simply more profitable. It's the reason why we currently house ~25% of the world's prisoners when we make up only 4% of the world's population. Jim Crow laws and segregation kept black people poor and uneducated because black public schools did not have the proper funding due to the fact that when slavery ended, the slaves had nothing. If we fast-forward to Ronald Reagan, things only get worse. His war on drugs placed a sentencing disparity between cocaine (mainly used by white people at the time) and crack (mainly used by black people at the time) possession charges. 5 grams of crack would land you in prison for at least 5 years whereas 500 grams of cocaine carried the same sentencing. This was disparity was admitted by Republican politicians to disproportionately target black communities. Redlining, the practice of fencing off areas where companies would invest based on the racial demographics of the population, made it increasingly difficult for poor black people to succeed financially.

Too many black families are still in this situation because the system has been rigged against them for so long, that, by default, they begin their life in this country on the wrong foot. The policies that have been implemented (overwhelmingly by states'-righters but occasionally by Democrats like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden) still affect black communities and make it difficult for them to succeed. ...more
Oct 31, 2020 08:03AM · flag

Mara Statistics can be manipulated. As mentioned by another commenter, black communities are over policed. If other communities were policed and searched t ...more
Mar 24, 2021 12:16PM · flag

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The New Jim Crow

by Michelle Alexander

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