The New Jim Crow Blog #1: The War on Drugs, Yet No War on Poverty.

-

 Ryan M. - BLOG #1 Analyzing Systemic Racism and The War on Drugs:

    This past week I started reading The New Jim Crow, a book that dives deep into the manifestation of racism in our society. I really enjoy the book so far! It is full of mind-opening evidence and facts from over a hundred different sources. It includes scandals like The War on Drugs and so many statistics on how events like The War on Drugs played out for people in America, and specifically how it affected people of color.

Richard Nixon, The War on Drugs (Karimi)

"The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United Stated--drugs that were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in the form of crack cocaine"(Alexander).

    Throughout the Intro and Chapter 1, Alexander reveals damning evidence involving racism in The War on Drugs that started during the Nixon era. The "war" was then blown out of control in the Reagan era, and is still continuing to affect Black communities around America. 

    I love the way Alexander presents this evidence to lead into many other topics throughout the book. It provides a nice backdrop for the implications The War on Drugs had on Black people throughout the U.S.

    Alexander starts to delve deep into the economics behind The War on Drugs, and its implicitly racist policies that left real-world implications on the Black community to this day. Alexander makes these fascinating comparisons from government funding records that show these racist policies purely with numbers. 

   "DEA antidrug spending frew from $86 million to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 million to $181 million"(Alexander).

In the same time period-

 "The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million"(Alexander).

    Comparisons like these have been my favorite part of this book. Not only does she provide what she believes to be true, but she actually proves it with numbers and facts that are indisputable. I personally believe that proving systemic racism through pure facts and numbers is the best way to show the government they are doing wrong, and force them to do something about it. A strong comparison does miles more work to prove an organization wrong than an opinion because it simply cannot be refuted.

        - What do you think about this? Do you think that the argument against systemic racism is better made with powerful speeches, or using facts to call for justice? Or maybe even a mix of the two?

    For those reading this that do not know, The War on Drugs ended up creating the Crack epidemic that has permanently destroyed many Black communities to this day. The Crack epidemic raged on through the 80s and 90s allowing for more of this phony "War on Drugs" political nonsense to strategically destroy Black communities while they were "fighting the enemy". It turns out, the CIA was actually trafficking drugs into the U.S. themselves and were using the money to fund illegal military operations in Nicaragua. It's crazy, I know, but it's real!

    The War on Drugs was only one of many topics in the introduction and first chapter including racialized social control, and racial caste systems like slavery and the Jim Crow era. I am really enjoying the book so far, and I love how dense it is with information. It is really nice to be able to choose from a variety of topics to write about just off of two chapters. 

- Feel free to start a discussion below on any of the topics discussed in the book!


Works Cited

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 7, 2021 at 5:31 PM

    Hi Ryan,
    I really appreciate your insight on her use of facts and supporting her argument. I definitely agree with the effectiveness of her persuasive strategies. Something that I noticed as well is that she goes into a lot of detail to provide her reader with the most information possible when she explains her argument. Do you think she will keep using these strategies in the rest of the book?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMarch 7, 2021 at 5:34 PM

    Both of our books seem to start with stories as a "backdrop" as you said, to the rest of the story. My book "Race" starts with stories from ancient civilizations, but still the feeling is very similar to yours. What I like so much about this approach to starting a book is how interesting it is. Starting too bogged down in facts and statistics can throw me off when I begin reading something. The best part is that stories don't always have meanings laid out at the end so you can make your own takeaways from them. As for your question on what approach is more effective, I think that a mix of emotion and logic is good. As for getting a message out, I think it's best to make an empowered speech to the public, one containing stories and anecdotes that will get people on board. Then, after you find who's interested, you save the facts to back up your stories. As for critics, or people wanting to debate, definitely better to use your facts there. Good first post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownMarch 9, 2021 at 7:00 PM

      Hi Tom! Thanks for your comment, I would also agree that a good empowering speech is extremely important for getting a message across. Empowering speeches were very prevalent during the Obama administration, Obama used his skills in public speaking to get his voters excited for him and made them want to vote for him. Though speeches are extremely important and powerful, I truly believe especially in our age of social media news, and extremely biased cable tv news, sometimes the facts are needed to simply show the other side of an argument that their argument is not very logical. Sometimes news networks like to cut up speeches and just say 'wow this person said ...' and take their words out of context which is a huge problem. Facts are more bulletproof with that type of biased networking being spewed all over the world. I agree that mixture is the way to go.
      Thanks for commenting,
      Ryan

      Delete
  3. AnonymousMarch 8, 2021 at 8:52 AM

    Hi Ryan,
    I'm also finding the book to be quite interesting. The part about the War on Drugs caught my interest in particularly because of how outlandish the claims being made seemed. At first, I was somewhat dubious of the extent of the underlying racism. However, the more I read, the more the explanation seemed likely. I like how you pointed out how the use of statistics and comparisons was effective- I agree. I also like the way that the blog is formatted- the spacing makes it easier to read.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ms. LaClairMarch 9, 2021 at 8:07 AM

    It is certainly interesting to compare the funding put into the War on Drugs, versus the funding to help with drug addiction. Did Alexander provide evidence to show that the motivation for the drug laws was specifically racially motivated? Don't forget page numbers for quotes.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ryan Metzger - Racial Disparity and its Plaguing of America

-
Image
 Ryan Metzger - 3/18/2021 Racial Disparity - Arguement Crack Vs. Cocaine - A Disparity Like No Other (Lacroix)      Throughout the entirety of The New Jim Crow, Alexander has been proving her underlying argument that there is systemic racial disparity in America. Be it the police, the C.I.A, the U.S. Government, the Justice Departent, the courts, or the jails, racial disparity plays a role in the treatment of individuals throughout America. Alexander proves this argument definitively and effectively through the use of extensive research and facts. I must admit, I really appreciate the style Alexander uses to form arguments over an extended period of time, almost like she is building a court case. Alexanders investigative journalism allows The New Jim Crow to thrive in its logical and emotional evidence, and is able to display the sequence and similarity in which events have played out in American history.     "Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely...
Read more

Ryan Metzger - The Mass Incarceration of the Black Men of America - Rhetorical Analysis

-
Image
 Ryan Metzger - 3/25/2021 The New Jim Crow - Rhetorical Analysis -  Mass Incarceration, Then and Now (Remnick)      Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog! In this blog I will be discussing mass incarceration of the Black Community, and more specifically, the Black men of America. Many of us at one point or another have heard of the stereotype that Black fathers are usually not with their kids, but why has this become a stereotype, and how?     Alexander answers this question in depth with lots of facts and information as per usual, but also adds some questions of her own in order to give new light to the conversation. Alexander uses rhetorical questions throughout the entirety of the book in order to show a new viewpoint of a topic, or make the reader question what they may have previously believed to be true. Alexander's rhetorical questions work extremely well with here style of asking a question, providing evidence that answers the question, and then...
Read more

Ryan Metzger - Final Thoughts - Why Does Systemic Racism Exist? And How Do We Solve It?

-
Image
 Ryan Metzger - 4/1/2021 Final Thoughts - Why Does Systemic Racism Exist? And How Do We Solve It?        To start this blog I am going to show you two different pictures, one of them is from Chicago in 1919, and the other is in Baltimore in 2015. Red Summer in Chicago: The Race Riots of 1919 (Bates) Riots in Baltimore After The Killing of Freddie Gray: 2015 (Lee)      Nearly a century later, and with a new era of "Jim Crow Laws", what has changed? And more importantly, is systemic racism worse now in 2021 than it was more than a century before in 1919?   The answer to that question is starting to become grimmer as America seems to drift further apart every day. Considering that over 592,000 Black people were incarcerated as of 2007 (Gramlich), I don't think America has come very far, if not gone backward.   Time and time again in American history, we have seen the systemic oppression of Black people. First, it was slavery, then it w...
Read more