How else was the government to continue to systemically hold down minorities in this country post-Civil Rights Act, while simultaneously enriching the Military Industrial Complex by flooding local law enforcement with military equipment paid for by US taxpayers?
It's pretty clear what certain people wanted in response to the 70s stemming from the rise of minority groups like the Black Panthers or the American Indian Movement trying to use their newly-enacted rights to fight oppression. Even the NRA was pro gun control when the Black Panthers were using the 2A for open-carrying to protect black Americans.
If it was truly about marijuana use, then when usage rates for white and black Americans are effectively the same, black people would not be 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.
Or say, one group has historical disadvantage which causes them to be disproportionately poor which causes them to be more likely themselves to commit crime and/or live in high crime areas. Which then leads to an increased police presence and, therefore, an increased chance of police interaction.
There's no need to add in the practically unprovable presence of deliberate targeting when other explanations sufficiently account for disparities.
I think the thing you said about priors is repeating a talking point about prosecution or sentencing disparities that isn't particularly relevant in the context of an arrest.
I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.
> I think the thing you said about priors is repeating a talking point about prosecution or sentencing disparities that isn't particularly relevant in the context of an arrest.
Arrests don’t occur in a vacuum. The prior convictions are known and are a factor.
> I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.
Person A is smoking pot and is arrested. Person B is smoking pot wearing a bloody t shirt with a knife in his hand. If you’re more likely to engage in criminal activity, you’re more likely to be smoking pot while engaging in criminal activity (again, on average).
> If you’re more likely to engage in criminal activity, you’re more likely to be smoking pot while engaging in criminal activity (again, on average).
I think a slightly simpler way of putting your point is that Black people are more likely to be serious criminals than white people. Am I missing some nuance?
Yes, and if person A and B are white American and African American, the AA smoker is much more likely to be actually arrested, rather than given a warning, etc. at the officer's discretion.
Dog whistles about unknowns like previous convictions or criminal history, and fictitious scenarios attempting to justify your point, don't actually help you the way you think they do.
If you're ignorant enough to think there isn't a disproportionately racist response in the WoD and the application of anti-cannabis laws on the citizenry, you need to open your eyes.
Attempting to claim "the prior convictions are known and are a factor" without admitting the disproportionate affect race has on such convictions being sought in the first place, is ignorant.
"Arrests don't occur in a vacuum." - If you deliberately and willfully ignore the existence of racism in the policing and justice systems, then you're not considering all the factors - and are being misinformed at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.
For example, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67214409 - a world championship medallist and Olympian sprinter were arrested on entirely fictitious charges of having suspected drugs and weapons - with no basis, and with no evidence of such items being found.
If you can't see how the factor of race fits into the application of these laws against certain citizens more, that's your failure - it's nothing new.
None of what you say counters their point. At the end of the day African Americans commit a disproportionate amount of crime, it would be a miracle if they didn't have more prior convictions on average.
All the stats we have focus around arrests, charges, convictions, so any systemic racism in enforcement is included.
African Americans being arrested more per capita for a crime is not inherently the same as committing more crime per capita.
I have a hard time figuring how you could ever prove your claim, because how do you show who committed crimes that were either not suspects, or crimes that weren’t discovered or reported?
They're trying to denounce the racial aspect of likelihood of being targeted/prosecuted, by going "African Americans are more likely to be involved in crime already" - which is also inherent on racial biases and profiling in the police and criminal justice systems.
The point is that they can't jump to racist dog-whistles and then pretend like race isn't a factor in targeting to begin with.
I don't think anyone wanted the sweeping disinformation campaign about marijuana that flooded both the airwaves and law-enforcement training syllabuses that we got from the federal government.
It is hard to expect a republic to make sensible decisions when it's citizens are being actively misinformed. It is also hard to not impute malice on people who push blatantly false information.
It does make one wonder why, given the history of known deception, many people have recently seemed to abandon all critical thought and fervently believe whatever the government tells them.
"You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? 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.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
Nixon was certainly an enigma compared to other US Presidents:
Advocated for "Universal Healthcare" by basically mandating the Federal government to provide stop loss reinsurance to employers and creating a marketplace for poor people with income adjusted premiums... sounds familiar.
Families often raise a concern about how they never knew member X to be a baddie (eg The Golden State Killer). This is not a compelling refutation. Whether anyone can be wrong or lying about anything, is equally weak.
The part about "enriching the military industrial complex" is certainly a conspiracy theory though. The MIC has only ever shrunk in importance in the American economy, and giving people their used products is like the opposite of enriching them.
That’s not even an uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote.
I was talking about the domestic law enforcement continuing to use the stuff they got for cheap/federally subsidized, or free, because “it’s effective.”
They generally don't actually use it or have a use for it though, that's part of the problem. And I don't think buying replacement tires for an MRAP is a lot of subscription revenue.
Please tell me more about Congress spending money on equipment the military doesn't need or want isn't corporate welfare for Defense Contractors.
Eisenhower even warned us to such actions in 1961, and literally if there was ever someone who would know: it would be a man that was on both sides as a high-ranking general and President.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
This article is not about giving used equipment to police departments.
> Eisenhower even warned us to such actions in 1961
Yeah, and we did what he said. US military spending as % GDP has gone straight down since ~1985. (Except around 2008 - but that's because our GDP went down.)
Since 1997, the 1033 program has handed $7.4bn worth of surplus equipment from the Department of Defense (DoD) to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies across America.
sure, let me spend my Saturday going on Google for you, to find the overwhelming evidence that has been gathered for the past several decades, which you somehow missed.
We know that the US police are more likely to shoot white people than black people based on the FBI data, so it’s not unreasonable to think this may also be an urban legend
