Both Clinton and Dole have trotted out crime and drugs as campaign
issues. Both are calling for drug testing of inmates. Both present crime
and drugs as problems of individuals, who must be made to pay the price.
What they don't talk about is the blatant racism of the so-called "war on
drugs," and the government's role in the drug trade. For the Black
community, what is occurring is not a war on drugs, but government genocide.
Current facts back up this charge of systematic extermination. Poverty
and unemployment rates among Blacks, especially for the youth, are double,
or higher, that of whites. Both of these social ills are main sources for
crime and drug use. It is estimated, for example, that two thirds of drug
sellers among Blacks are moonlighters who also work at jobs with
subsistence wages. But neither Clinton nor Dole target the system that
produces this unemployment and poverty--they scapegoat the individuals.
The incarceration of Blacks is another indication of a systematic
government effort to destroy them. For Black men, 32.2% of those between
the ages of 20 and 29 are in jail, largely as a result of drug offenses. It
is estimated that if current imprisonment trends continue, a majority of
Black males between the ages of 18 and 40 will be in prison by the year 2010.
Black people make up about 12% of the US population, and an estimated
13% of the illegal drug users. They make up 74% of those sentenced to
prison for drug possession.
Government Responsibility for the Drug Trade
In the past decade, while jailing and drug-related murders of Blacks
has greatly increased, and the whole Black community, especially the youth,
have been branded as criminals, the drug trade and multi-billion dollar
drug profits have continued without let up.
Cocaine is not produced in the Black community nor controlled by it.
The ready availability of cheap drugs and cheap guns is not organized by
Blacks. The massive amounts of profits are not in their hands, but in those
of the big banks, CIA, etc. Black people are the ones forced to pay the
price of the drug addiction and drug related violence and death imposed on
their communities.
A recent report in the San Jose Mercury News has documented the fact
that during the 1980's, the CIA organized to flood Black communities in Los
Angeles with cheap crack cocaine. The profits were used to fund and arm the
government's contras in Nicaragua. The agents, the banks, the US firms
exporting chemicals for cocaine production, the contras--all those who
profited were protected. The report has now been confirmed by a former DEA
agent.
When this old news was "leaked," the government claimed it was an
exception. It should be remembered that the government also claimed that
Colonel Oliver North, exposed as a government drug runner, was an exception.
The Black community knows government responsibility for the drug trade
to be the rule, not the exception. So much so that even the National Urban
League, in its 1990 State of Black America report, said, "There is at least
one concept that must be recognized if one is to see the pervasive and
insidious nature of the drug problem for the African-American community.
Though difficult to accept, that is the concept of genocide."
Along with flooding Black communities with cheap, highly addictive
drugs, and using the media to create a scare campaign about crack cocaine
in particular, the government also increased the penalties for users and
sellers of crack. A person caught with 5 grams of crack gets a mandatory 5
years in jail. It takes 500 grams of powdered cocaine to receive 5 years.
Drug arrests of crack users, not suppliers, dramatically increased.
Social Relations Must Change
An enlightened view recognizes that the problems of drugs and crime are
social problems, products of society, not individuals or families. Most
crime involves property theft or drugs--both closely linked to poverty,
unemployment and racism.
Alongside the government organized or sanctioned drug trade, there is
the systematic theft of wealth inherent to the capitalist system. Private
ownership of production persists in a society with highly socialized
production, causing severe stress in human relations. The fruits of labor
produced by millions is stolen by the handful of finance capitalists that
dominate society. Racism and repression are part and parcel of a system
designed to produce maximum profits for the few.
Crime and drugs have to be seen in this social context. If the
ownership of large-scale production were to become social and all the
fruits of that production were distributed socially, the objective basis
for crime would be immediately eliminated. So long as the capitalist system
persists, with those in power benefiting from both scapegoating and
destroying whole sections of the population, genocide is a real danger--not
only for Black people, but all of humanity.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
