Citation:

“The Drug War is the New Jim Crow | American Civil Liberties Union.” American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org/documents/drug-war-new-jim-crow. Accessed 24 Oct. 2023.

Summary:

This article is about how the war on drugs is becoming the new Jim Crow. It explains how when it comes to being prosecuted over drugs, African Americans are arrested 13.4 times more than white people. It also tells us the amount of African American men that gets incarcerated is nearly the same as the men enslaved in 1820. Anyone that was arrested had their opportunity to vote taken away forever without the possibility of getting it back. Black women also lost their babies whenever they showed signs of drug abuse and/or had a history of drug abuse. They would be forced to take a drug test and if they failed the test, they would lose custody of their babies, forcing the child to be in foster care and the mother going to prison. The drug war would even go as far as being a risk to one’s education if they were caught with drugs, yet murder, sexual assault, and other forms of harm to a person would not affect one’s education.

Analysis:

This article shows the indifference the government has towards black people when it comes to drugs. The U.S.’ population is majority Caucasian people, yet more African Americans are incarcerated compared to white people when it comes to drugs. One thing that really stood out to me was when the author stated that Attorney General John Ashcroft wants to escalate the drug war and there are others who agree with them. If this happened to be the case, more and more black people are likely to be prosecuted over drugs.

Quote:

“Nevertheless, African-Americans are admitted to state prisons at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than whites, a disparity driven largely by the grossly racial targeting of drug laws. In some states, even those outside the Old Confederacy, blacks make up 90% of drug prisoners and are up to 57 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for drug crimes.”