Pardon Me
Pardon errrybody
I hope everyone had a good (or considering the state of the word…decent) holiday this past week. I took some time away from writing to see family and hope others could do the same.
Before going too far, and on that note about family— please check out this gofundme every bit helps.
So much has happened in a week including more ridiculous nominations but today’s thing I want to add a little ‘about that tho’ context is about this weekend’s big story about President Biden issuing a pardon for his son, Hunter, after most of us are old enough to remember a few months ago him saying he would do no such thing.
GASP!
¿Cómo pudiste tío Joe?
First off— I started this talking about family and this move by Joe is about the same…family. And I don’t knock him one bit or blame him. Do you Joe Joe.
And for those people who are OUTRAGED at the morals of this man please see this link and below re: his predecessor/successor:
Yeah…guy seems pretty bad.
Anyway- I don’t care about pardoning your son especially when the case was 99% politically motivated and the special prosecutor fudged dates and timelines to sneak back in under statute of limitations. Fine… What I do care about is the thousands of other Hunters, mostly Black, ensnared in a system that won’t allow for similar help.
The war on drugs was created to arrest Black people.
There he goes again…with the race card and all that. Well my trump card (see what I did there) is the creator of the war on drugs said this explicitly.
Richard Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the war on drugs was designed to have precisely this impact on the Black community.
Here are his words-
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
They also perpetuated the presumption of guilt assigned to Black people because they connected our image with drug use and abuse. They then created numerous policies to overpolice our communities, over arrest, and overcharge. Unsurprisingly, this led to vast disparities in who was ultimately incarcerated for drug offenses.
After Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, the number of people incarcerated in American jails and prisons escalated from 300,000 to 2.3 million, and two-thirds of those in prison for drug offenses are people of color.
Mind you— white people use drugs at a same or HIGHER rate— Black and brown communities are just arrested and incarcerated more for it. This wasn’t just Nixon but SINCE NIXON. They also created language shifts in laws to handle offenses differently based on race differences in drug types.
The most commonly known example was the crack/cocaine disparity. Crack, which was cut more and cheaper was used more by poorer Black people, whereas the just as if not more potent cocaine was more expensive and almost exclusively white (pun unintended) and handled differently.
Little crack in your pocket? Life in prison. Ton of coke in your Mercedes glovebox? A ticket and maybe community service. Cool.
Even worse… it is not unheard of for police to plant crack on Black suspects just to add to a charge and put us away.
This is all by design.
When Black people are charged 5X the rate for drug offenses even if the actual use is even or lower, we are bound to be stuck in this unjust cycle unless we get a little help within the system.
This is where Joe Biden could and should come in. If a system exists in which the chief executive can undo past wrongs — it should not just be reserved for family, even though family is important, those Black and brown people have families too, they just don’t have a dad who is President.
PS…while you are at it Joe push that student debt button.
Keep writing bro. I truly appreciate you. We are seeing privilege in full effect.