IS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION SUSTAINED BY THE DRUG WAR?

During and after the years of slavery, there was a great bond among
African-Americans. There was love and respect for one another based on
common experience. This brotherhood/sisterhood,has sadly diminished in the
last two decades.

The drug war is the insidious cause of the cultural retrogression. It has
succeeded because minorities have embraced the war. Deliberate or not, the
drug war is an ingenious 'divide and conquer' scheme. It is so brilliant
that most people support it as it tears society, freedom, and democracy apart.

The so-called 'peace dividend' after the end of the cold war was
immediately diverted to the drug war. Funds that should be used for urban
renewal and educational programs are used to fight the war, while schools
literally crumble around the children.

Overt racial discrimination is not tolerated in any public or private
business. But it has gone out of control in the criminal justice system and
been sustained by the attitude of the drug war. The war against crack
cocaine has led African Americans to support the incarceration of their
own. Fear is the driving force in this paradigm. Fear that has been
instilled by government propaganda, heightened by questionably motivated
private interests, such as the Partnership for a Drug Free America &
Private Prison Industry.

We often hear that the US has five to ten times the rate of incarceration
of any European nation. We don't hear as much about the fact that it has
been so totally unbalanced from a racial point of view. While the rate of
imprisonment of whites is about two times that of other nations, it is more
than ten times greater for blacks in most states. Blacks get longer
sentences than whites, on average, for the same crimes. These numbers are
new in the last several years, and it is strictly drug arrests that have
created them.

We, in effect, have gone into the poorest areas, taken help away, turned
them into battlefields, and put a tempting basket of goodies in the middle
of the street, seducing children who see no hope in their futures. The big
bright basket of drug dealing offers youngsters the things they otherwise
will not attain. Then we tell them they must not touch, and have imposed
terrible penalties for doing so. It is as if we deliberately have set these
traps to destroy them.

While people can see that prohibition has made drug dealing ever more
lucrative, they won't consider any alternative. It is obvious to many of us
that the drug war is the root cause of violent gangs that terrorize inner
city residents. In my neighborhood in my youth, there were drugs and
dealers, but they did not use guns in their business. Unleashing police to
do war on Americans initiated the violence, causing dealers to begin to arm
themselves and become increasingly violent against the cops and everyone else.

The stereotype of a young, dangerous minority criminal has done
incalculable damage to race relations. The fear shown by whites has caused
a backlash of loathing from young blacks. The real enemy is displaced.

The unfairness of this burden is heightened by the fact that blacks do not
use drugs any more than whites do and whites are not arrested as frequently
or punished as severely as minorities.

Too many people value security more than privacy or freedom. The image of
violent young minority males has exacerbated racism and interracial
distrust. The drug war has pitted individuals against one another. Through
our drug control strategies we have taught an entire generation to be
abusive and disrespectful of the rights of others!

The thinking that infliction of pain is the best way to teach people has
seeped into the values of our society. The culture of punishment has
developed with and sustains the drug war.

The stigma of drugs and the drug war's denigration of addicts, users and
dealers has exacerbated intolerance. It is used by drug warriors and has
become another 'divide and conquer' device.

We must reap the bitter harvest others have sown, the harvest of
exaggerated and growing race and class distrust, the harvest of fear and
violence, the harvest of a lost generation, the American un-culturated,
displaced persons who are simply trying to survive in our cities the only
ways they have learned to do so. These ways are contrary to the avenues to
success in the mainstream. .

The drug civil war has little to do with drugs. It is about controlling
human beings -- physically and morally. It has twisted values and beliefs.

The saddest thing about the war on drugs is that most minorities support
it. The disaster of the drug war blurs the effects of the drugs. Through
the eyes of fear, people don't see that the problems associated with drug
use are made worse by the mentality of the drug war. Because of the
insidious nature of the war on drugs, inner city people tend to cling to it
as their only hope,while it is actually this century's instrument of their
destruction.