Yesterday we basically discussed the war on the black male and female, I figured more then a few of you would have something to say about that post and that’s fine, I will address those issues in due time don’t worry, but for now lets move on to the next war which is:

4.      The War on Drugs

I don’t even really feel I need to go into this one at all but I will.  Primarily because this one actually goes back farther than most of us realize.  You see when most of us think about a war on drugs we think about, Richard Nixon in 1971 making his formal declaration.  But the seeds of understanding the impact of the modern war on drugs goes back to the 1920’s and prohibition. 

For those of you that don’t know prohibition refers to the National Prohibition Act or the Volstead Act that made it illegal to sale, produce, or transport alcohol for consumption.  The early 1900’s is famous not only for the Great Depression but also for the “GREAT DEPRESSION.”  For those of you that don’t catch my meaning I am referring to the score of white women that were getting beaten and abused by their drunken husbands, and the scores of drunken husbands that drank themselves into a useless stupor.  One could argue that this had a hand in the movement of the feminist movement to the forefront of White American Society, but I digress.  From 1920-1933 Prohibition was in the books and it caused such a ruckus that the government repealed it.  Imagine that, the government making a proven negative drug legal because the citizens refused to accept the law.

Now all that does is give some historical context to the war on drugs and in my opinion the government learned an invaluable lesson on public opinion and how to control it.  Fast forward 50 or so years and they are back at it.  This time it isn’t one particular drug, it’s all the drugs, specifically the ones seen predominantly in the poor neighborhoods.  And in 1973 the DEA was born with the sole purpose of filling prisons with black pe. . . . oh I’m sorry I meant with getting drugs off the streets in America. 

With Crack being targeted as the most dangerous drug on the street and the image of the crack-head being championed as a dirty homeless black man, the stage was set to remove the black male from the black family picture all together.  And for those cheeky blacks that didn’t fit the image of a crack-head, there was the image of the crack dealer (drug-dealer) that was circulated.  So basically if you weren’t on drugs you were selling drugs and in both cases you would go to jail.  Not a treatment facility, to jail. 

Now the real point to mention with the war on drugs is the 100:1 ratio.  What that means is that if you got caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine you would receive a minimum sentence of 5 years, if you got caught with 500 grams of the more potent and expensive powder cocaine you would get a minimum of 5 years.  The problem here is apparent and created a very carefully created dynamic that targeted poor people because crack was cheaper than powder, although they are both cocaine.  The image of the black drug dealer and the black crack head can still be found in modern times with the stop and frisk policies largely endorsed all over the country.  The Campaign has been the most successful thing at putting black men in jail since debt slavery was outlawed in the 1940’s.  While in 2008 the ratio was changed to 18:1 the damage has still already been done with 14 percent of the population counting for 40 percent of those incarcerated and the majority of those being black males.

Last point of mention on the war on drugs is that not only did it create a new dynamic for the black family by removing the men, but it also created a time frame for the death of the black community.  We can actually refer to the era before crack as BC (Before Crack) and the time period after the death of the community as AD (After Death).  This also introduced another horrible psychological component of exposing children at a young age to the horrors of dysfunction, violence, and drug abuse.  The psychological components of this are still very real to this very day and the image of the crack baby and the crackhead mother willing to sell her child for a rock further destroyed the black image and those the black community.

But how do you feel about it, do you feel the war on drugs contributed?  Did I miss something?  Voice your opinion?

Tune in tomorrow for the next Chapter