2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

The racism does not surprise me nor does the use of the War on Drugs as a method for local and state police department to receive excessive funding and military weapons. The federal government has always been able to get the states on board with new policies by either providing or withholding rewards. When the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed, states that still allowed people under 21 to purchase alcohol were denied their full federal highway apportionment. I had always been told that the United States had extremely high military spending; it makes perfect sense too when you consider the War on Drugs as a physical war and not a political concept. Despite fact after racial statistic   after fact being spit out in the New Jim Crow, a few things still remain vague to me. If 95% of traffic stops yield no illegal drugs, why do “Operation Pipeline” tactics continue to be used? Don’t the police feel like their exploiting whole communities when they target small-time drug pushers rather than targeting the kingpins? In my opinion it’s a backhanded way to try to increase department profits, willingly allowing the manufacturing and selling of drugs until cops can bust the middleman, confiscate and utilize their profits. The political goals of the War on Drugs are also still vague. Did Reagan intend on stopping manufacturing, use, or just project his political “toughness?”

Still, the War on Drugs proves to be more of a war on people. The repercussion of the War on Drugs—- 80-90% of drug arrests result in the incarceration of people of color.

A couple of things I applaud Michelle Alexander for include stating that marijuana is a drug that is less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol, as well as showing how white communities were seven to eight times more likely to use harder drugs such as cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin than their African American counterparts.

The sad truth is that unconscious racial bias exists, whether or not we want it to be true. I had an extended conversation with my mother about this last night and she agreed but instead of blaming years of institutionalized concepts she just said that’s just how things are, implying that there’s not much we can do to change the stigmas. Perspectives like this one just continue to frustrate me.

As I read these chapters, I can’t help but think to myself- maybe my parents should be reading this. That’s not because they’re racist, but because when I express a desire to leave the country for just one month, they tell me it’s unsafe. “Well, what if people there are racist?” they ask. “What if something bad happens to you?” My automatic response to them at the time was, “what you think America is all good? Bad things happen here all the time.” However, then, to prove to my parents that it isn’t that safe here, I would just point to the statistics of crime and incarceration rates. Little did I pay attention to (or want to pay attention, after I got the results that I was hoping for) what kind of crimes these were, who was committing them, etc. Now, rather than point to the crimes of citizens here, maybe I should focus on the government. We think it’s all safe and everyone’s being made and treated equally, but as the author points out, this is definitely not the case. Sure, we may be better than many other countries as well. And rather than just losing all faith in our country and moving away, we should try to promote equality and stop the illogical doings of our leaders. We can make a difference!

Reading chapter 2 and 3 was, in a way, difficult to digest. Early on, the country specifically put in its constitution mechanisms against certain treatment of its citizens, namely the Fourth Amendment. Against the forefathers’ ideals, the amendment was manipulated to allow the exactly what it had originally opposed. Each step in the gradual process wasn’t enough to cause a revolution, but it seemed like each was more corrupt than the last. The Supreme Court facilitated much the wrongdoing. It is simply outrageous that the police organizations outright accept funds only if they are full players in making drug busts their priority. A scarier thought is that it can get worse. All lines regarding preserving the citizens rights according to the constitution have been crossed already. Manipulating people to plead guilty when they aren’t is far enough. But who is to say how much farther it will go and where it will stop?