DRUGS, RACE AND THE FIRING OF COL. CARL WILLIAMS

Poor Col. Carl Williams. He was born too soon to understand how to navigate
the nuances of political correctness. In his ambush interview with the
Newark Star-Ledger, he made some factual comments about drug trafficking
that ended his 35-year career (Inquirer, March 1).

Williams naively discussed the association of certain types of illegal drug
traffic with ethnic groups. Before the ink was dry on the article, Gov.
Whitman hung the colonel out to dry. But nobody has challenged the accuracy
of his remarks. Even the governor declined to discuss whether his comments
were true when she said, "I'm not arguing with what he was saying, I'm
arguing with how he said it, and when he said it, and the way he said it."

A politically correct indictment if there ever was one. If Williams had
lied in the interview, he'd still have his job. So the score is: Political
Correctness, 1; Honor, Duty, Fidelity, 0.

If Sgt. Joe Friday were still on the beat, he would now have to say: "Just
the facts, ma'am, unless of course, someone might take offense."

So the question now is: How many carloads of drugs, on their way to
adolescents in North Jersey and New York, should the troopers, in the name
of political correctness, wave through?

Gene Boyle

Cinnaminson

The controversy surrounding Gov. Whitman's ouster of her top state police
officer, Carl Williams, over his remarks about minorities and drugs
highlights a grave problem facing our society (Inquirer, March 1).

Sadly and quite disturbingly, Whitman has said that she is "not arguing
with what he was saying." What he was saying was that minorities are more
likely to be involved in the illegal drug trade. This is a grievous error
of fact as well as an outrageous affront to all minorities.

In reality, illegal drug use cuts across all racial and ethnic lines fairly
evenly. However, while only about 11 percent of illegal drug users are
African American, this group accounts for 37 percent of those arrested for
drug violations, 42 percent of those in federal prisons for drug violations
and almost 60 percent of those in state prisons for drug felonies.

It becomes increasingly clear that the war on drugs is largely a war on
minorities. A cursory reading of the history of drug policy in the United
States reveals the ugly truth about the uses of race-baiting by drug
prohibitionists. Before the civil rights movement, when no social sanctions
existed to deter racist speech in the mainstream media, drug
prohibitionists regularly appealed to white, middle-class fears of African
Americans and Hispanics, fabricating scare-stories of "hopped-up Negroes"
raping white women.

Apparently, these erroneous and racist ideas endure in the perception that
exists today among many whites that minorities are more likely to be
involved with drugs. It simply isn't true.

Larry Stevens

Springfield, Ill.