The case.org publication clearly states that Anslinger's first-hand exposure to drug addiction as a child in a poor neighborhood that drove his drug policy. After his personal story failed to convince legislators, he used minorities as scapegoats to get drug legislation to pass. His career demonstrates that this was not personal animus against minorities; Anslinger hired several dozen African-American agents at the FBN over the objectives of his staff; the first Chinese-American law-enforcement officer in America (and indeed, is credited as launching one of the first diversity initiatives in the federal government). Also, Anslinger really hated hippies, regardless of race (and most hippies were white), because of their excessive drug use.
The NIH article assumes a racial bias exists in drug policy without bothering to prove it.
Drug policies have had a disparate racial impact but this is not the same thing as having been intended to be based on race. It's simply that different racial groups in the U.S. use drugs to different degrees.
>After his personal story failed to convince legislators, he used minorities as scapegoats to get drug legislation to pass.
This is a good undisputed example of race being a key factor in US drug policy. The fact that racial stereotypes and caricatures may have been the second strategy that Anslinger used to achieve his aims is neither here nor there when discussing the historical usage of race in creating and implementing drug policy in the US.
If, for some reason, the topic of the history of race and US drug policy were to be mistaken for the topic of “racism as defined as a fundamentally unknowable specter haunting the heart of Harry Anslinger” then his various hires could be germane. Those are, however, fundamentally different subjects to such a degree that there is no meaningful connection between the two that would make one useful in discussing the other.
When people are claiming that drug policy is racially motivated, proof of the opposite is very much on point. Anslinger was very open about the fact that his childhood in poverty was behind his extreme anti-drug stance, not some supposed racism that didn't exist until marijuana activists tried to rewrite history in the 1970s.
You are conflating what you think is a commentary on Anslinger’s internal values with what is a factual statement about the history of drug policy in the US.
We both agree that Anslinger leveraged racial stereotypes in order to achieve his agenda. Race was the tool that ultimately got him the power that he sought. The fact that he failed to gain that power through his own honest accounting of his life story does not in any way serve as proof of anything — certainly not “proof of the opposite” that drug policies were enacted on racial grounds.
It is easy to ponder the inner workings of a man’s soul and mind, as it is easy to project whatever positive or negative motivations on a man. That activity is, however, completely separate from a factual accounting of what a man said, did, and achieved.
I think that you’re taking the most charitable view of Anslinger’s conduct possible.
You’re essentially arguing that because he hired a few black DEA agents, his vilification propaganda campaigns and pandering to the Jim Crow crowd in congress to get support wasn’t “intended” to target people based on their race.
You can split hairs that his actions were in conflict with his true feelings I suppose. But additions tend to speak louder than words, and brutal oppression of racial groups motivated by careerism is equally repugnant.
Even worse, the guy is exactly making the point that it is exactly about race. Heck the dude himself may not have been racist, he clearly used systemic racism to get drug laws passed. That exactly is what racism is. If nothing about the system was racist, the associating it with black strategy would not have worked
Except that he didn't brutally oppress racial groups...
He brutally went after drug dealers and drug users, regardless of race. He pursued WASPs, Catholic mobsters, white hippies, and minorities with equal lack of restraint.
Again, the problem was not racism. The problem was the extreme lengths he was willing to go to quash drugs. And that was driven by the drug use he witnessed as a child, in a white neighborhood.
The case.org publication clearly states that Anslinger's first-hand exposure to drug addiction as a child in a poor neighborhood that drove his drug policy. After his personal story failed to convince legislators, he used minorities as scapegoats to get drug legislation to pass. His career demonstrates that this was not personal animus against minorities; Anslinger hired several dozen African-American agents at the FBN over the objectives of his staff; the first Chinese-American law-enforcement officer in America (and indeed, is credited as launching one of the first diversity initiatives in the federal government). Also, Anslinger really hated hippies, regardless of race (and most hippies were white), because of their excessive drug use.
The NIH article assumes a racial bias exists in drug policy without bothering to prove it.
Drug policies have had a disparate racial impact but this is not the same thing as having been intended to be based on race. It's simply that different racial groups in the U.S. use drugs to different degrees.