There was no wave of compassion when addicts were hooked on crack

[TalkingDog]

Because..... white people.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/there-was-no-wave-of-compassion-when-addicts-were-hooked-on-crack/

Back then, when addiction was a black problem, there was no wave of national compassion. Instead, we were warned of super predators, young, faceless black men wearing bandannas and sagging jeans.

No matter how far from our lives crack was, we’re guilty by association. By the time I was in college in the early 1990s, my short dreadlocks meant older women would cross the street to avoid me.

African-Americans were cast as pathological. Their plight was evidence of collective moral failure, of welfare mothers and rock-slinging thugs and a reason to cut off all help. Blacks would just have to pull themselves out of the crack epidemic. Until then, the only answer lay in cordoning off the wreckage with militarized policing.

Today, police chiefs facing heroin addiction are responding not by invoking war, but by trying to save lives and get people into rehab. Suddenly, crime is understood as a sign of underlying addiction, rather than a scourge to be eradicated.

[malaise]

1. Well as Nixon's goon pointed out

the entire war on drugs was about destroying African-Americans and hippies. Who do you think provided the drugs? Now it's their lily white kids on heroin.

[hobbit709]

3. Pretty much sums up the whole drug war thing right there.

About 90% of the crackheads I've encountered were white.

[malaise]

4. Once we ignore the fluff from M$Greedia and the politicians with their owners' agendas

we see things clearly

[hobbit709]

5. My illusions were pretty much burned off in Chicago '68.

[malaise]

7. Late 60s to mid 70s did it for me

Can't be fooled again

[Sunlei]

22. Today there are ads on TV, treat your opioid addiction, Rehab. covered by insurance, call now.

The Drug Corps who profited off billions of dosages, way in excess of patients served should be paying for ALL Americans healthcare.

[FarPoint]

27. Excellent point.

They need to be held accountable.

[valerief]

24. Bingo! But I can't help but feel this heroin addiction problem was also designed by

TPTB. I mean, why have we been in Afghanistan so long? And why, during our occupation, has Afghanistan increased its opium production dramatically?

[malaise]

25. +1,000

There are some folks making loads of money from heroin in Afghanistan

[Sunlei]

29. IMO, the flowers are not just grown in Afgan. The Afgans and the Paks, have huge addiction problems.

[valerief]

30. That would come with the territory. But they wouldn't grow so much if there weren't

the high-level buyers for the opium, buyers who want more and more, buyers who put the kabosh on the Taliban who didn't want poppies grown. Who has that power?

[Sunlei]

31. all those contractors paid by our DOD federal funds, someones shipping home tons of that crap.

[valerief]

33. Right. Our DOD. nt

[brush]

2. The way you juxtaposed two similar cultural phenomenon is so on point.

Guess we shouldn't be surprised though. America continues to be America, as in Minnesota where yet again a DA just refused to indict two killer cops who murdered a black man.

[Hoyt]

6. Ain't that the truth. On a similar note, our local news had the sheriff on last night concerned

about 4 Black kids who posted a video of them in a car waving pistols around. Law enforcement and a lot of the white wing don't give a darn if yahoos walk around with gunz, draw down on federal agents, and worse, but let some black kid get one and they go nuts.

Related to drugs, as soon as white kids started overdosing, the police were given overdose injections. I'm glad we are doing these things, but it's disgusting it took so long.

[malaise]

8. Bro when you've systematically victimized people for the color of their skin for centuries

Last edited Thu Mar 31, 2016, 10:12 AM - Edit history (1)

You must fear the day they are armed. The institutional thinking is 'what if they do to us what we have done to them'.

[malthaussen]

13. That's because they know that if the situation were reversed...

... they'd slaughter every one of the oppressors they could if they had a chance.

-- Mal

[malaise]

14. Isn't that their argument for their 2nd amendment

+1, 000

[malthaussen]

15. You betcha

Poor fools think that the President wouldn't nuke Des Moines if he thought it was expedient. That handgun is a "great equalizer," donca know? Not to mention always reliably hard.

Anecdotally, I had acquaintances in high school who were stocked up on weapons and ammo for "when the nigs revolt." Granted that they were proto-skinheads (before skinheads existed), there's nevertheless a lot of that going around.

While I do, actually, understand and even sympathize with the rationale of a Lockean appeal to Heaven, I've never been of the opinion that it was likely to work.

-- Mal

[rug]

9. Similaly, no compassion for meth addicts because . . . . poor people.

[Ed Suspicious]

10. SO right.

[MisterP]

11. plus we got two Pharma parties now--oxy doxies

[rug]

35. There's more and more data coming out that rx's are the gateway to heroin.

Heroin is cheaper.

[Overseas]

12. K&R.

[fbc]

16. Good point, good post.

[HughBeaumont]

17. Boyz N the Hood:

[referring to drug epidemic] I know every time you turn on the TV that's what you see. Black People, pushing the rock, selling the rock, that's what you see. But see that wasn't a problem as long as it was here. [referring to Compton, Watts, other Black ghettos] It wasn't a problem until it was in Iowa or on Wall Street where there are hardly any black people.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. ...

"Now senators are getting high.
And your plan against the ghetto backfired."

[HughBeaumont]

19. Death Certificate is one of the most underrated hip hop albums of the 1990s.

Lots of amazing beats and lyrics on that one.

[Sunlei]

20. crack 100 times the criminal charges of powder. used to be 1000x? before obama changed it a little.

[Chakab]

21. What's most absurd about the sentencing disparity between crack and

powder cocaine is that a given amount of crack generally contains less actual cocaine than the same amount of powder cocaine that's sold by street level dealers.

Crack is just cocaine mixed with substances like baking soda to facilitate it being smoked in solid form. It's not a different drug. What they've done is to create a massive disparity in the penalty based on the method of consumption of cocaine.

[Sunlei]

23. scam to get more people in 'for profit' prisons for decades.Like the souths pig laws to create chain

chain gangs. Humans 'leased' to Corps, work in the fields, in the mines, in the factories. Slaves to work to death, easy to replace.

[wendylaroux]

26. Yup

[CrispyQ]

28. I read this on FB yesterday.

BLM because for 400 years they haven't.



Excellent post.

[ScreamingMeemie]

32. Depending on where you live. I was not selected for a jury here in Houston,

but the judge felt it her duty to send a letter to everyone who sat through voir dire. An 18-year-old Hispanic male was sent away for 18-24 years for being in a car with weed. "Possession with intent." It still depends.

[Rebkeh]

34. Excellent essay!

So, the lesson here is to let our empathy extend beyond racial identification of others. When black kids are your kids too, there is hope and a brighter future is possible.

When Tryavon was killed, I saw my family. He was my nephew or cousin, not some random teenager. How many white people saw a thug? How many saw an older child much like their own? How many see the Tamir Rices of the world as children to be protected?

We need to get there, all of us. Connected by empathy instead of division by indifference.