5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Race and the drug war, May 15, 2009
This review is from: Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs (Paperback)
Race and the Drug War
Randall G. Shelden
November 8, 2009
According to the latest national figures, the incarceration rate of racial minorities continues to dwarf the rate for whites. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in June, 2008 the overall incarceration rate for black males was 4,777 (per 100,000) compared to a rate of only 727 for white males. Black females had an incarceration rate of 349 compared to 93 for white females. The rate for Hispanics fell in between at 1,760 for males and 147 the females. It reminds me of the phrase popular in the 1960s: "If you're white, you're alright; if you're brown, stick around; if you're black, stay back."
When it comes to drug offenses, the rate differential is off the charts, with black offenders constituting up to 90% of prison admissions on drug convictions in states such as Illinois, Maryland, South Dakota and Utah (according to a Human Rights Watch study). Also, racial differences in the rate of drug offenders sentenced to prison are huge, with Illinois a prime example (a rate of 1146 for blacks and only 20 for whites). Nationally, the rate for black males for drugs is 482 compared to just 36 for whites. These are figures from the mid-1990s, but the most recent figures continue to show large racial disparities. For instance, a new report by the Sentencing Project (April, 2009) shows that of all the drug offenders currently in prison as of 2005, 43% were black, 32% were Hispanic and 23% were white. In the federal system 82% of all crack cocaine cases in 2006 were black. Another Sentencing Project report noted that "Between 1994 and 2003, the average time served by African Americans for a drug offense increased by 62%, compared with an increase of 17% for white drug offenders." (For more go to the following web site: [...] .) As surveys repeatedly show, there are few if any differences in illegal drug usage among the different racial groups.
Many scholars have noted that these racial discrepancies have been in evidence for more than 100 years, dating as far back as the crackdown on opium among the Chinese in San Francisco in the late 19th century. It has also been noted that every major piece of anti-drug legislation has targeted drugs used mostly by minorities. In effect the history of the war on drugs shows convincingly that this has been a war on racial and ethnic minorities.
The structure of racism is obvious. Yet despite this neither Congress nor the courts are doing anything to correct this disparity. This has been puzzling me for several years now and I have been wondering why this is. I have finally found an answer in what I consider to be one of the best - if not the best - book ever written on the subject of race and the drug war. Doris Marie Provine provides these answers in Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
She gets the reader's attention immediately on the first page of the introductory chapter with a case against 18-year-old black male named Edward James Clary in the eastern federal District Court of Missouri. (Clary lived in East St. Louis, a city with perhaps the highest poverty rate in the country, among other glaring problems.) With no prior convictions Clary was arrested for possession of a 16-gram mixture that contained only 4 grams of "crack." The federal sentencing guidelines called for a ten year term in prison. But the judge in this case, Clyde Cahill, challenged these guidelines (based upon research he reviewed on racial disparities) and lowered the sentence to four years. Clary served his sentence, was released and became a married man and a father. The prosecutor, however, was not satisfied and filed an appeal asking the appellate court to reverse the sentence. The court did so and Clary had to return to prison to serve out the rest of the ten years.
What Cahill tried to do was rare. Specifically, he looked at racism as a systemic and institutional problem, rather than a problem of individuals who intended to engage in racist or discriminatory behavior. However, in a society characterized by rugged individualism and a laissez faire free market system, problems are rarely seen as structural in origin. The tendency to see racism as a form of individual bias is clear in the Supreme Court's treatment of cases charging racism. The best case in point is the death penalty case of McCleskey v. Kemp where the court ruled that, despite overwhelming evidence that race plays a key role in the death penalty, there was no evidence that "any of the decisionmakers in McCleskey's case acted with discriminatory purpose."
This line of reasoning says that in order to prove race is a factor you have to prove that there was intent on the part of persons in authority positions (e.g., judges, prosecutors) and that they intentionally singled out for discriminatory treatment the person filing the claim. This is almost impossible to prove. It apparently doesn't matter that the ways the laws are worded and the methods of enforcing these laws disproportionately target racial minorities. The American "free market" system does not recognize this, just as it doesn't recognize the obvious connection between social class, race and a host of life chances.
Provine leaves this case for the time being and moves on to a fascinating historical journey that takes us back to the social movement that resulted in the passage of the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol.
As many scholars have already noted, prohibition and the contemporary drug war are examples of moralistic crusades (the Temperance movement began in 1874 in the South and was organized by Christian evangelicals). But they are more than that, for all of these social movements to outlaw drugs have been racist. I never realized that this applied to Prohibition until I began to read chapter 2 in Provine's book.
She begins by noting that alcohol abuse was a concern during the colonial period - but not the alcohol use by whites, for it is well known that the leaders of the American Revolution enjoyed more than a glass of port now and then. Many were described as plain drunkards. What bothered colonists was the use of alcohol by slaves, Indians and "other social inferiors" because they might become "dangerously out of control" (p. 37).
The Temperance Movement of the last half of the 19th century gained momentum and this was helped in no small way by concerns among Southerners about the image of the "menacing drunken Negro and his inherent propensity to alcoholic excess" (as noted in a newspaper story). In both the North and the South the use of race "was obvious and fundamental to the entire effort" (p. 38). Native whites expressed much concern about the drinking habits of European immigrants, especially Irish, German and Italian. Provine writes that: "Prohibition served the important purpose of differentiating groups and assigning status. It marked the supremacy of small-town and rural middle class, white Protestant morality over the norms of the foreign-born, the Catholics, the Jews, and the Blacks....Most important, these groups threatened the old order by their growing numbers and their growing economic significance in industrial society" (p. 45).
In the South the image of the drunken black man who felt "secret lust" for white women was the big rallying cry. Over and over again, the news media reported exaggerated claims of drunken black men attacking white women. After the Civil War there was a movement to promote segregation and to disenfranchise Black voters, aided by increasing prosecutions and convictions against them for alcohol consumption. Ironically, after the passage of the 18th Amendment, in many Southern states arrests for whites on charges of drunkenness and possession of alcohol were so high that support for prohibition began to decline (in Alabama about half of those arrested were white middle class women).
At the conclusion of this chapter Provine demonstrates some rather obvious connections between race during both Prohibition and the more recent movement directed against the use of crack cocaine and other drugs. "The underlying messages of both campaigns are remarkably similar in suggesting that already marginalized groups are extremely dangerous under the influence of drugs. Then, as now, the mainstream press uncritically amplified these ideas, even when disenfranchisement of Black citizens was clearly at stake" (p. 61). It is also important to note that the enforcement of Prohibition laws was directed mostly at the poor, while most of the wealthy were ignored, even those who benefited from the business of bootlegging. I recall reading somewhere a story about the time that New York legislators passed anti-alcohol legislation during the day and celebrated that same night by drinking whiskey, a favorite drink among the wealthy. (I am still searching for a source on this story.)
The title of chapter 3 pretty much summarizes the contents: "Negro Cocaine Fiends, Mexican Marijuana Smokers, and Chinese Opium Addicts." In this chapter the author covers familiar historical ground that has been reported before by such scholars as David Musto (American Disease) and David Helmer (Drugs and Minority Oppression), among others. The nice thing about this chapter, however, is that in just a few pages she shows the role of the media (and how it is so easily manipulated by moral crusaders and government officials) and racism in the transformation of drug use and addiction from a white middle class problem (e.g., cocaine and heroin were sold over the counter and use extensively by privileged whites and the 1897 Sears catalog sold hypodermic kits for users of morphine) to a problem exclusively of the lower...
Read more ›
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![American Culture [under construction]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61f%2B7EkDHmL._AA60_.jpg)
