{"id":6888,"date":"2023-11-03T01:01:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T05:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/?p=6888"},"modified":"2023-11-03T01:01:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T05:01:18","slug":"america-has-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/2023\/11\/03\/america-has-a-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"America Has A Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The war on drugs or the war on people of color? “The war on crime” was coined by Nixon as a way to fight against political movements like Black Power, Black Panther, and Women’s Rights and Gay Liberation. Nixon couldn’t simply arrest people for being POC (person of color) and being anti-war, so he went and created this new “problem” that America had: drugs. Nixon’s promise of “law and order” came with the result of harsh criminal laws, police, and a new idea that would inflict generational trauma. Nixon was using the term “war on crime” and, later on, “the war on drugs” as a stand cause to arrest blacks and Hispanics. Instead of focusing on rehabilitation, Nixon continued to set the foundation of racism in this country by choosing to attack drug addiction as a criminal offense. As a result, America saw an exponential increase in prison with people going for low-level offenses, primarily people of color. This wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it be the last. With Nixon’s “war on drugs,” politicians quickly adopted harsher views on crime as their policies, as a way to win votes in the South. Policies like the “3 strikes” in Bill Clinton’s presidency allowed to lock away people for life if they had committed a felony three times. Another policy Clinton enacted was the “1994 Federal Crime Bill” which expanded the prison system and allowed for police to become the abusive military power they are today. Even though Clinton admits to his wrongdoing of the past, we cannot simply ignore the precedent he and the others before him established. In the documentary,\u00a013,\u00a0<\/em>we reflect on how the 13 Amendment freed all enslaved people, but did it truly grant freedom? If the amendment had a loophole stating that involuntary labor was legal as long as it was a punishment for a crime. Then unsurprising black people immediately landed in prison, doubling incarceration rates in a short amount of time. Black people have never experienced true freedom in the “land of the free” when they are constantly being oppressed into a system that only terrorizes them for their race. The war on drugs is no better than any proceeding caused before it, it is simply a political method to attack POC while parading an idea of “safety” in the streets.\u00a0 (389)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The war on drugs or the war on people of color? “The war on crime” was coined by Nixon as a way to fight against political movements like Black Power, Black Panther, and Women’s Rights and Gay Liberation. Nixon couldn’t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[550397],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6889,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6888\/revisions\/6889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ch115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}