KEEP IT REAL

Recasting The Drug Debate In Terms Of Accountability And Opportunity

VICTOR MONTALVO WAS A RAMP RAT. Until last summer, he had scurried to work
in the darkness of early mornings, had lurched home long after the sunset
did its nightly number for the tourists in the vast Florida sky. And like
most of his fellow baggage handlers at Miami International Airport, Montalvo
wanted better. He just wanted too much better, too soon.

On August 25, Montalvo and 57 other employees of American Airlines-most of
them Hispanic and African- American-were arrested in the biggest drug sting
operation ever conducted against employees of a U.S. airline. The
investigation had been launched in April 1997, when a pilot complained that
a cup of coffee he had been served in flight "tasted funny." American
Airlines porters, with a little help from their friends at Houston-based Sky
Chef, Inc., had stowed 17 pounds of heroin in coffee packets used in the
jetliner's galley. By the time Operation Ramp Rat/Sky Chef was concluded two
years later, ATF agents had conducted 38 false drug transactions with
American Airlines personnel. On one occasion, for facilitating the shipment
of three hand grenades, a pistol, and a few kilos of bogus cocaine aboard a
727, Montalvo accepted $7000 rolled into a Styrofoam cup. When they busted
into his home on a steamy Miami morning, authorities found the cash, plus
five laptop computers and another $62,000, in a bedroom safe. Montalvo was
making less than half that much per year-before he checked into federal
prison, that is.

Let markets be bullish, e-companies overvalued. When it comes to getting
rich quick, there's still nothing like narcotics. Men like Victor Montalvo
used to dream about, and work toward, life in the middle class. This is not
to say that the road to social and economic viability for members of ethnic
minorities has ever been easy. Racism-overt and subtle-has always been among
the most daunting obstacles in their way. But there seems to be less traffic
these days on the much-palavered highway to the middle class. Instead, to
answer Regis, everyone wants to be a millionaire. Particularly to members of
minorities groups which remain underrepresented in the professional ranks,
America's illegal-drug industry can loom like a golden promise just on the
other side of destitution.

The overrepresentation of minorities in the ranks of drug offenders is seen
by some as iron-clad proof of institutional racism, by others as evidence
for a link between culture and crime. Liberals dismiss "zero-tolerance"
policies and "mandatory-minimum" sentences as creatures of conservative
bias; conservatives reject rehabilitation programs and treatment regimens as
soft on crime. Lost in the shuffle has been the key to the debate about
ethnicity and drugs in America. At its core, the nation's drug problem is
about opportunity and accountability. Drug crimes do not happen
accidentally; they reflect the economic choices of their perpetrators.
Recognizing as much absolves no crooked cop of his racism, no criminal of
his greed. It does, however, set us on firmer ground for a real discourse
about race and drugs.

Racism and Its Role

The vast majority of drug users in the U.S. are white. According to the
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) headed by retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, African-Americans constitute 15% of the U.S. population addicted
to drugs. In a 1999 national household survey by McCaffrey's office, 54% of
whites between ages 18-25 admitted to having ever used illegal drugs,
compared to 35% of Hispanics and 41% of African-Americans. Whites were also
more likely to have used cocaine-both in powder and crack form-and much more
likely to have used marijuana. Whites comprised 60% of admissions to
substance-abuse treatment services, blacks 25%, and Hispanics just under
15%. More white Americans required emergency room attention for drug
overdoses than African-Americans and Hispanics combined.

All this notwithstanding, federal sentencing statistics show that 72% of
those convicted of drug crimes in 1997 were black (33%) or Hispanic (39%).
Blacks comprised 84% of arrests for crack offenses, Hispanics 58% of arrests
for marijuana possession and sale. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a
branch of the Justice Department, recently found that the rate and average
length of imprisonment for federal drug offenses for African-Americans has
increased steadily in comparison to the numbers for whites since 1986.
Critics point to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of that year, which demanded
five-year minimum sentences for anyone possessing five grams of crack or 500
grams of powder cocaine. For crimes involving 50 to 150 grams of cocaine,
crack defendants received median sentences of 120 months behind bars,
compared to 18 months for powder. Since crack is cheaper, more widely
circulated in the inner city, and dealt by smaller-scale drug dealers than
powder, more strident prosecution of its abuse has been interpreted as
racist.

Defenders of the 1988 Act contend, correctly, that crack is more
concentrated (it takes a gram of the white stuff to make 0.8 grams of
crack), more addictive, and more closely linked to gang activity than powder
cocaine. Whether that justifies the 100-to-one penalty ratio is unclear.
Attorney General Janet Reno and Gen. McCaffrey concluded in 1998 that it
does not. The White House continues to push for a change in the federal
sentencing ratio, but admits that crack dealing merits proportionately
harsher sentencing-at a ratio of, say, 10-to-one.

Others contend that talk of sentencing guidelines masks the more blunt
racism observed in enforcement techniques. More minority drug users end up
in jail, goes the logic, because more of them are pursued, and more of them
are caught. Go ahead and punish all drug abuse similarly; you'll still see
an overrepresentation of African- Americans and Hispanics in jail because
the police want it that way.

More Money, More Problems

While there are certainly bad cops out there-we might as well add bad
commissioners, bad district attorneys, and bad mayors-racism institutional
or otherwise cannot on its own explain away the persistent entanglement of
minority communities and drugs in the U.S. As Jennifer Hochschild puts it in
her seminal Facing Up to the American Dream, "In some neighborhoods, the
crack industry...is the only expanding and dynamic equal-opportunity
employer for minority kids. Most don't make it, but there are BMWs being
washed on the street corners and people wearing gold, so that the American
dream is a touchable reality, even if statistically it is not real." It
isn't so much that poverty forces starving and hopeless youths into the drug
trade. No one wants to be poor, and of course narcotics can seem like a fast
and easy cure for indigence.

But nobody goes into the crack business to lead a middle-class life. Cornel
West, Mark Naisson, and William Wilson among others have argued that the
American Dream has been reshaped in many African-American communities. With
the disappearance of urban manufacturing jobs, access to the middle class
has become trickier; successful minorities take their capital and stability
with them when they inevitably relocate to the suburbs; and much of American
popular culture promotes the wanton consumption of goods beyond middle-class
reach. It's fair to say, in short, that your average crack dealer wants his
life to look more like a Trick Daddy video than a rerun of the Waltons.

And it is the expectation that drugs can generate financial security, the
pipe dream that they lead the way out of the ghetto, that is most
threatening to the advancement of people like Victor Montalvo. The debate
about race and drugs in America needs to transcend the race-baiting of the
left and the fear-mongering of the right. Long and hard contemplation about
what the American Dream means today, sustained and dedicated work at making
the right kinds of opportunities more available to people of all races, need
to be the heart of the matter.

Index for the Harvard Political Review's series:

"Smoke and Mirrors - America's Drug War"

The Thirty Years' War - (Part 1 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a03.html

Editorial: From The Editor - (Part 2 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a02.html

The Experts Speak Out - (Part 3 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a05.html

Keep It Real - (Part 4 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a04.html

The Colombian Conundrum - (Part 5 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a06.html

Demystifying the Dutch - (Part 6 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a03.html

Paralyzed by Politics - (Part 7 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a01.html

An Unfortunate Hypocrisy - (Part 8 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a02.html

Throwing Away the Key - (Part 9 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a04.html

Beyond Good and Evil - (Part 10 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a05.html