Was it drugs, or was it black people? “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people”. The campaign had nothing to do with drugs in the first place but instead found a way to fracture communities through the harsh criminalization of drugs. This was not hard on drugs, people were suffering but it wasn’t due to the drugs. The racist legislation caused a massive disparity in who was in prison for drug-related charges. This is extremely apparent in the criminalization of crack vs. cocaine. Crack was more criminalized than cocaine due to it being more seen as dirty rather than sophisticated like cocaine which many suburban white people would use. More inner-city African-American communities were using crack due to it being cheaper which led to the campaigns against it being so much harsher. The sentence for possession of 1g of crack was equivalent to 100g of cocaine. This caused huge amounts of black people to be thrown into prison for what should have been minor crimes. It was a war on poor minority communities increasing the wage disparity between the rich and people in poverty. The amount of African Americans sent to prison on drug charges painted them like animals who were less than human; being marketed as super predators who were unsafe. The media gave this harmful narrative allowing for a resurgence of racism in the US. The downfall of this legislation was largely caused by its deliberate actions against people of color. The legislation was a dumpster fire from the start allowing for extreme racial profiling and state structured racism. From what the media and government officials have said the war on drugs was not deliberately targeting minority communities and truly had good intentions, but from the documentary and direct quotes from Nixon’s staff, the war on drugs aimed to destroy these communities. This evidence completely contradicts what the media had said, and it is clear that this was targeted. The war on drugs caused many deep wounds within the US whose scars can still be felt to this day.
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I think the part where you mention that this increased the wage disparity is very important. When you specifically target poorer communities and imprison the people, it becomes harder to make money when people leave prison (because it is harder for felons to get jobs). This means that when more poorer people are targeted by imprisonment, they will have even less opportunity to make money and the wealth gap will widen, like you mentioned, which I think is very important to look at.
As you discussed, the picture that the media paints can be deadly. In the case of the War on Drugs, it gave racists illegitimate evidence to accuse and attack black communities for possession of drugs. In class, the conclusion that was drawn was that chemically, crack and cocaine are very similar. It is mind blowing that only 1 gram of crack would result in the same prison sentence as possession of 100 grams of cocaine, when they are virtually identical. It would be difficult to argue that there were no racial motivations behind these laws that were enacted, when there is clear evidence to support this claim.