Drug wars = race wars

“According to the federal government’s own yearly research surveys, African Americans use and sell drugs at similar rates at whites — yet African Americans are arrested for drugs at 13 times the rate of whites”. (Huffingtonpost). A major threat to fundamental principles of democracy is that of generating and re-generating a certain discourse in pursuit of a particular desired policy outcome. The disproportionate effect of drug policies and enforcement on the African-American communities has grabbed media attention for the past week. Unfortunately, the discourse has been ongoing for many many years.

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske claims, “we cannot arrest our way out of the drug war problem”. “People of color are classified as “criminals,” permanently trapping them in a second-class status and allowing a whole range of legal discrimination (in employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights, jury duty and so forth)”. These inextricably linked problems become a self-perpetuating cycle that can only terminate with the shift in paradigm in examining the causation instead of the consequences of bad policies. Questions like “Why it is that young white people use and sell drugs at similar rates yet our prisons are filled mostly with African Americans and Latinos?” has to be asked, and answered sufficiently.

In a way, the safeguard of “innocent until proven guilty”, like that of section 11(d) of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is violated in practice. The stigma is self-enforcing and the presumptions and prejudice that follows violates the guarantee of freedom and liberty that the United States and most democracies are founded upon.

Resources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-newman/drug-war-african-american_b_1105690.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2012/0306/Biden-in-Honduras-US-drug-policy-under-scrutiny