REGARDING THE LATEST CHAPTER IN THE U.S. POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT’S QUEST TO KEEP MILLIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS SUBJUGATED, DISENFRANCHISED, AND TOILING FOR LITTLE OR NO REMUNERATION:
In 1994, President Nixon’s aide, John Ehrlichman, put the matter succinctly and in crystal-clear terms: The War on Drugs was conceived by Richard Nixon and the GOP — not in response to any rising crisis in drug use — but specifically to criminalize and break up whole, politically unruly, communities.
BLACK communities, first and foremost.
(Because, as Ehrlichman observed, they couldn’t make simply being black illegal and needed any excuse to devastate those strongly anti-war, anti-fascist communities.)
In 2018, America’s white-supremacist essence has been exposed many times over, surely, but Nixon’s former adviser confessed a rare, unvarnished truth: Conceived by Republicans, metastasized and normalized under Democrats, RACE-BASED mass-incarceration (the “Drug War”) was literally designed to disenfranchise and enslave millions of black Americans.
And that’s exactly what it has done.
That’s why it’s called The New Jim Crow — with respect to Michelle Alexander, whose book should be considered essential reading for any self-respecting American.
One form of slavery replaces another. It’s the American way.