Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Professor Blacktruth - MoT #17 7 LIES Rittenhouse & His Supporters Told
Laying Out December Agenda & 2022 Agendas-&-Goals....
Monday, November 29, 2021
Professor Blacktruth - MoT #13 More Rittenhouse Trial Corruption/The Best Defense
Professor Blacktruth - MoT #11 Toni Morrison: Even Dead Tools Can Be Broken
Sunday, November 28, 2021
This is what I Mean by White Power Supremacy & Its Slaves....
Column: The ‘war on drugs’ was always about race
Democrats talk about a “failed war on drugs” because they lack the fortitude to speak on this uncomfortable truth: It didn’t fail.
As Kathleen Frydl eloquently points out in her book “The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973,” the country’s gradual move from regulating recreational drugs to criminalizing them came to fruition in 1968. Before then, the federal government’s version of the drug war included tax policies such as the Marihuana Act of 1937, sending tax collectors after the industry.
After 1968, under the Justice Department instead of the Treasury (did no one consider Health and Human Services?), it was clear the war’s focus was criminal prosecutions, not treatment. So even before President Richard Nixon declared cannabis and other recreational drugs to be Public Enemy No. 1 in 1971, the Johnson administration had set the policy that would swell U.S. prisons for decades to come.
About 1.3 million of the 2.3 million incarcerated people in this country are in state prisons. Drug-related crimes are the most common reason for imprisonment in state prisons. The country has the planet’s highest prison population. Doesn’t it seem a bit nonsensical to characterize the drug war as a failure when sending people to prison for drug-related crimes was the intent?
But where the “failed war on drugs” rhetoric goes from nonsensical to offensive is when Democrats speak as if the race disparity in drug-related arrests wasn’t intentional.
“For decades, our federal government has waged a War on Drugs that has unfairly impacted low-income communities and communities of color. … It is time for Congress to end the federal marijuana prohibition and reinvest in communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs.”
These are the words of Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who along with two other Democratic co-sponsors announced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act last week. While I applaud the move to end marijuana prohibition, I’m not a fan of the soft landing he gave our anti-drug history.
“Unfairly impacted”?
Nah, bruh — we were targeted. We are targeted.
Today Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than our white counterparts, despite comparable usage rates. And these arrests … we know they can ruin lives.
There are more than 500,000 people in jail right now simply because they can’t afford bail.
We know the FBI’s illegal Counterintelligence Program used policies from the drug war to try to discredit the civil rights movement and attack Black leaders like members of the Black Panther Party.
We know Nixon’s own domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, said that drug laws gave a pretext to “arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.” He even said: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
And we know in 1971, the same year Nixon launched his drug war, he was recorded sharing laughs with California Gov. Ronald Reagan as they call Africans “monkeys” and “cannibals.” Later, as president, Reagan put Nixon’s drug war and mass incarceration on steroids.
So, no, I won’t tolerate attempts to frame the drug war as failed. I won’t accept a narrative that suggests it was simply flawed legislation or that the racial disparity was an unforeseen byproduct. None of this was driven by science. This was driven by prejudice and politics. For decades, anyone who wanted to be president had to come across as being the toughest on crime and drugs. That would include President Biden, who as a senator in 1994 sponsored the crime bill that helped to double the prison population from 1994 to 2009.
That’s not “unfairly impacted.” That’s state-sanctioned racism masquerading as good policy.
Yes, it is disgusting. Yes, it is nefarious. But it is also the truth. Rebranding it doesn’t change that.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
An Interesting Article....
U of C students say the killing of a Chinese alum has sparked anti-Black sentiment
By Esther Yoon-Ji KangSome University of Chicago students and community groups gathered on campus Monday to decry the university’s immediate plans to improve safety in the aftermath of the killing of a Chinese alum earlier this month. The groups also denounced an increase of anti-Black sentiment on campus in the wake of the killing.
Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng, a 24-year-old international student from China, was shot and killed near campus during a robbery on Nov. 9. Three days later, the Chicago Police Department announced that Alton Spann, an 18-year-old Black man, had been apprehended and charged with Zheng’s killing. Spann is charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, according to police.
U of C administrators responded with calls for action — including a rally and a letter signed by more than 300 faculty members, many of them Asian — by announcing a joint effort with Chicago police. The plan would increase police presence and install more surveillance throughout the Hyde Park campus on Chicago’s South Side.
On Monday, some students and local groups said adding more police and surveillance in Hyde Park is not the answer to a long-standing problem. Instead, they called for long-term solutions to gun violence on campus and in surrounding areas.
“Hyde Park is already one of the most policed neighborhoods in Chicago,” said Grace Pai, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago. “Increasing policing and surveillance will not deter future gun violence because policing and surveillance do not address the root causes of violence such as decades of disinvestment, structural racism, poverty, trauma and lack of opportunity.”
Those who gathered Monday, including Asian and Black UChicago students, also said there has been a rise in anti-Black sentiment on campus, particularly over social media, that paints Black students and Black residents of neighboring communities with a broad brush.
Keegan Ballantyne, a second-year undergraduate and member of the Organization of Black Students, said comments have ranged from calling for U of C’s campus to gentrify and become more like that of Northwestern University in north suburban Evanston, to asking “if it’s OK … to just fear all Black men walking around in the Hyde Park community.”
Jasmine Lu, a graduate computer science student, said the international student community was shaken up by the killing. However, she said mourning the death of a fellow student cannot be at the expense of other communities.
“I very much understand the fears and concerns of international students in the community, but also denounce the very racist and co-opting of Black Lives Matter language,” Lu said, referring to anti-Black comments on social media and some signs displayed at a rally last week attended by hundreds of students and community members.
She added that the perspective of many international students “comes from [having experienced] policing in a different country, and it’s very different the way that policing is racialized in the United States.”
She also said many Chinese students, including some organizers of last week’s rally, expressed dismay that the event — intended to express grief and fear — was co-opted by some attendees to “pit Asians against Black people in the community.”
Pai, with Advancing Justice, said, “We all want to live, work and study in communities that feel safe.” She said public safety needs to be addressed, “but that that is public safety for all communities. Black communities have borne the brunt of gun violence and disinvestment for decades. We can learn from what those communities are telling us about what would make them feel safe.”
Pai and others called for more resources to address the decades of disinvestment in communities surrounding Hyde Park.
On Chicago’s South Side, which includes large populations of Black and Asian residents, violent deaths of Asians have often been met with calls for more policing. In February 2020, the arrest of a Black man for the killings of two Chinese men in Chinatown was followed by an increase in anti-Black sentiment in the community and demands for increased police patrols.
Grace Chan McKibben, a longtime Hyde Park resident and self-proclaimed “loyal alum” of UChicago, said she sees parallels between the aftermath of the Chinatown killings and Zheng’s killing: Asian residents banding together in grief and calling for immediate measures to address long-term problems — often to the detriment of Black community members.
“Safety is part of a much larger issue,” she said. “There’s economics, poverty, disenfranchisement — it’s all tied to systemic racism — and until we address those issues, addressing crime in and of itself is not enough.”
She also recalled the July murder of Keith Cooper, a Black Hyde Park resident, who died after an attempted carjacking. “There was a vigil, but there wasn’t the same outcry even though it was also a senseless murder for economic reasons in the same way,” said McKibben, who leads the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community.
“Every group certainly can identify with people that look and sound like them a lot more,” McKibben continued, “but compassion and overall strategies need to include everyone.”
The University of Chicago did not immediately respond to WBEZ’s request for comment.
Esther Yoon-Ji Kang is a reporter for WBEZ’s Race, Class and Communities desk. Follow her on Twitter @estheryjkang.