Editorial:
The
13%
Solution
10/30/98
As election day approaches, a report issued by the respected organizations The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch indicates that 1.4 million, or 13% of all African Americans, are ineligible to vote due to their criminal records. The report is a stunning reminder of the long-term impact of the nation's escalating drug war in communities of color. Intended or not, the fact is that the drug war has had a devastating impact on Black America. With its emphasis on arresting large numbers of people in order to justify its expense, enforcement will always be focused on poor and marginalized communities. It is in these communities that the drug trade operates in the open, making it far easier to sweep up dozens of low-level foot soldiers than to do the work required to arrest affluent whites whose drug deals, and drug use, occur behind closed doors. In a previous report, the Sentencing Project found that on any given day in America, fully one third of all African-American males between the ages of 18 and 29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision. It is no secret that the Drug War has contributed vastly to those numbers during the past 15 or more years. African Americans comprise an estimated 13% of the nation's drug users, but make up 55% of those convicted of drug charges. Taken together, these stark numbers indicate that black men are being systematically removed from the workforce, from their families and from the voting booth. They are also being saddled with criminal records which make them easy targets for law enforcement and the justice system should they "get out of line" in any way. If, as we dearly hope, these effects are unintended by the politicians who continue to pass harsher and harsher drug war legislation, their impact is no less ominous. By criminalizing large, almost unimaginably large segments of the black community, we have brought down official unemployment rates, forced women and children into positions of economic weakness and dependence, created prisons-as-jobs programs in rural, mostly white communities, collected surveillance data and developed networks of informants in black communities, taught a generation of young black kids that the government has coercive power over their lives, made adult males eligible for long prison terms for petty offenses or "disturbances" of any kind, and all the while whittled down the numbers of those who can make a difference at the ballot box. In short, the drug war is well on its way to re-instituting the legal status that black Americans were saddled with in the dark days of our nation's past, that of non-persons. It is a tragic devolution, embarked upon in the name of protecting America's (mostly white) children. But the truth is that we will never arrest enough Black kids to scare white kids away from drugs. And that is all the drug warriors are really trying to do. Because if one in three young white males were "in the system," or if 13% of the white population were ineligible to vote, there would likely be armed insurrection in the streets. But of course, there is no danger of that. So on we go, deleting our
most vulnerable and economically expendable populations from the employment
statistics, and the voting rolls, and the streets. It is a neat and
evil way of controlling an entire population. And until we as a society
are ready to face facts about the Drug War, to radically alter the way
we confront the issues of substance use and abuse, the numbers, telling
and disturbing as they are, are only going to get worse.
Adam
J. Smith
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