Random Articles I've Written

Slavery

Many people may not realize it, but slavery is still alive and is aggrandizing with our culture. It's hidden right in front of you, but yet you're too oblivious to see it.. How would you feel if a person told you that all minorities are the slaves? Being a minority is a crime, throughout history it has always been that way. Looking back in history minorities have been beaten, killed, enslaved, tortured, humiliated and portrayed as filthy savages. Now we're commonly incriminated and incarcerated for petty crimes, while we're still being humiliated, tortured and portrayed as filthy savages. When you look at common stereotypes give by the hoi polloi of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Europeans, it's not too common that the stereotypes be positive. Racism isn't just in our communities, it's also in our government's history. Clinton passed mandatory minimum laws, Nixon started the war on drugs and Bush's FEMA accident all gives hints to a common plan, modern slavery.
The United States of America has a population of approximately 323.1million people, it's roughly 9 times the population of Canada. Our top two countries with the highest populations are in the billions. [1]Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy are both employees from Prison Policy Initiative, they wrote an article called, "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017", which states, "The American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 901 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 76 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories." In the year 2014, the [2]NAACP took a census that states "Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015", it may not seem like alot, but let's say there's a large pizza delivered to a party. Everyone is supposed to get a slice, but instead, one person eats half of the large pizza, keep in mind that this pizza is supposed to feed the whole party, so imagine how big the pizza is. It would be logical to say that-that person ate a lot of pizza. That method can be applied to the data previously given. Now, it should be easier to paint a picture on how major this problem is.
During Nixon's presidency, he started what is currently known as the "War on Drugs". This may seem like a good idea considering drugs are bad, but it's really ambiguous. During this time in history Jim Crow laws had just been abolished. Although, it was illegal to segregate people cause of race, it was not illegal to not hire someone because of their ethnicity. Many people were turned down due to prejudice practices and had no way to feed their families. Many people were left with minimal options, one being to sell drugs. At the time this was illegal but it was fast and easy money. This money was used to support families and neighborhoods. Even though this substance was illegal, it was commonly used everywhere in the United States. After the domestication of drugs and different forms of cocaine and became even more popular, a hard shoulder was forced upon us minorities. According to Judge Frederic Block from his book titled [3]" Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge", The first anti-drug law in our country was a local law in San Francisco passed in 1875. It outlawed the smoking of opium and was directed at the Chinese because opium smoking was a peculiarly Chinese habit. It was believed that Chinese men were luring white women to have sex in opium dens. In 1909 Congress made opium smoking a federal offense by enacting the [4]Anti-Opium Act. Also,
[5]A New York Times article which was germane at the time was titled, "Negro cocaine 'Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace: Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower Class Blacks Because They Have Taken to 'Sniffing.'" These articles scream racism, but it wasn't as subliminal back in the 20th and 19th century as it is now.
After Nixon's last term ended he had a prodigy to follow in his footsteps; Bill Clinton. Clinton passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to reinforce Nixon's drug policy which skyrocketed the incarceration rate. The crime rate had risen just 28%, but in this 28% over 126% of the arrests were drug related crimes. Crack-cocaine and heroin being two of the most found in these arrests led to a high suspicion in low income neighborhoods. This drug was cheap but had high profits and was untaxed.
Ronald Reagan sought out to change sentencing times for each substance found. This may sound fair, but it's also ambiguous. The reason I say this is because the reason behind it. Pure cocaine and heroin was found to be used more commonly by caucasians in wealthy neighborhoods than African-Americans who sold Crack. Even though both of these illicit drugs are horrible for your body, pure cocaine and heroin are the most dangerous because it can be injected while Crack-cocaine was limited to smoking. Common sense would say to put a more harsh sentence on people with pure cocaine rather than its "crack" form. This was not this case, Crack-cocaine and heroin sentencing was considered to be 18 times more severe than pure cocaine. Why, you may ask ? Well the main Crack-cocaine and heroin distributors were predominantly minorities, so they gave them longer sentencing. It's no secret that some of America's leaders were racist. Quoted by John Ehrlichman(the President of Domestic affairs under President Richard Nixon) in a interview with [6]Harper's Magazine,"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." It's factual to say we as a Nation have a foundation built on racist intentions, built for the destruction of minorities. Some people are just uneducated on the topic of law, while others do know and encourage it.
References
Wagner, Peter, and Bernadette Rabuy. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017." Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016 | Prison Policy Initiative, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html.
NAACP, NAACP. "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." NAACP, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.
Block, Judge Frederic. "Racism's Hidden History in the War on Drugs." The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Mar. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-frederic-block/war-on-drugs_b_2384624.html.
M.d., Edward Huntington Williams and. "NEGRO COCAINE." The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1914, mobile.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fiends-are-a-new-southern-menace-murder-and-insanity.html.
LoBianco, Tom. "Report: Nixon's War on Drugs Targeted Black People." CNN, Cable News Network, 24 Mar. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html.
[1] Wagner, Peter, and Bernadette Rabuy. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017." Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016 | Prison Policy Initiative, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html.
[2] NAACP, NAACP. "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." NAACP, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.
[3]Block, Judge Frederic. "Racism's Hidden History in the War on Drugs." The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Mar. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-frederic-block/war-on-drugs_b_2384624.html.
[4]Block, Judge Frederic. "Racism's Hidden History in the War on Drugs." The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Mar. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-frederic-block/war-on-drugs_b_2384624.html.
[5] M.d., Edward Huntington Williams and. "NEGRO COCAINE." The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1914, mobile.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fiends-are-a-new-southern-menace-murder-and-insanity.html.
[6] LoBianco, Tom. "Report: Nixon's War on Drugs Targeted Black People." CNN, Cable News Network, 24 Mar. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html.