This video is interesting in it's own right, but around minute 12 there is an interesting statistic and claim....what do you think?
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This is the class blog for the Spring 2009 session of Philosophy of Race at Rhodes College.
The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. -- Barack Obama
Dr. J's PHIL 250
This is the class blog for the Spring 2009 session of Philosophy of Race at Rhodes College.
Texts For This Course
- Anti-semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre
- Blackness Visible, by Charles Mills
- Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, by Mahmood Mamdani
- Racism: A Short History, by George Frederickson
- The Colonizer and the Colonized, by Albert Memmi
- The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
- The Idea of Race, by Robert Bernasconi (Ed.)
- Whitewashing Race, by Michael Brown
Okay, my jaw literally dropped. I knew that the US incarcerated black males at a significantly higher rate, but this statistic really puts those numbers in perspective. In 1993 during Apartheid, South Africa incarcerated 851 black males per 100,000 people, while the US incarcerated 4,919 black males per 100,000 people in 2004. It's interesting how most Americans recognize structural racism in other countries, but have trouble seeing it in their own.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to take this statistic with a grain of salt, though. This could be completely wrong, but here's my guess at why there is such a disparatiy between the incarceration rate in the US and South Africa. The "resettlement" policy of Apartheid forced blacks to move to designated areas known as "bantustans" or homelands, in hopes to completely isolate them from the white community. Although not all blacks were completely isolated, the police probably encountered fewer blacks to arrest during Apartheid since so many had been relocated far from the major white cities.
I remember talking to Peter Christ once at a police conference once. He's got a convincing argument, but it wasn't enough to get my signature on his roster. Legalization would probably not end the fighting for selling grounds, which would still be competitive.
ReplyDeleteWhen things are legal, people are more apt to try them out since their government, who must be looking out for their welfare, said that a certain amount up to a point is okay. Two of the guys in my unit died using FDA approved diet pills that they thought must have been safe because the government said they were. Since then, those pills were prohibited and there were no subsequent accidents. Peter Christ's comparison to quitting the addiction to cigarettes sounds resonable, but I don't think nicotine is comparable to heroin in either addictive tendencies or negative effects.
I think that the "War on Drugs" is costly and ineffective, but I don't think that legalization is a good alternative either. I think that narcotics units should put their efforts into educating the public to dry up the market. As he pointed out, while the market is there, the drugs will be there too. Legalization is just another way for the government to collect tax revenue. The current institutional racism would not disappear but change from arrests into taxation (and probably arrests for tax evasion).
I think that he's got a point - the War on Drugs is bad. But his solution may just create another problem. They need to focus on the buyers rather than the dealers, who only exist because of the buyers' demand. Public education against drugs is the best way to stop the violence. If there's not profit to be made, there's not reason for dealers to risk the violence or even to deal at all.
What really makes my jaw drop is that this issue is still somehow "under the radar," despite what seems to be solid evidence. It seems like this country is full of corruption that is largely known but uncontested. Institutionalized racism is to our political system as Halliburton is to the war in Iraq.
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