The “war on drugs” and era of mass incarceration
The disproportionality of Blacks in prison grew over the following decades, becoming further entrenched in the 1970s and ’80s. As a backlash to communities struggling for civil and human rights — for themselves and for others — new laws took hold that made it easier to keep Black people in shackles and chains.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” to quell social unrest across the country — feeding a new racially tinged narrative about “inner city” crime for the constituency he called his “silent majority.” The war on drugs fueled a surge in prison populations, which continued to soar with the passage of state-level legislation like the Rockefeller drug laws in New York, and, in the 1980s, tough-on-crime measures, such as “three-strikes” laws and other draconian punishments for drug offenders.
Drug-related crimes represent the single biggest increase in incarceration rates over the past several decades. Statistical analysis show rates of drug use (and selling) to be similar across racial lines, however, Blacks are arrested on drug charges at rates that are three to five times as high as those of white adults.
Structural racism intensifies for people of color at every stage in the criminal justice system. These communities experience an over-policing that white communities — whether poor or not — never encounter. Young Black men are shot dead by police at 21 times the rate of young white men, according to the investigative journalists at ProPublica. And a recent Gallup poll shows that one in four young Black men recalled unfair treatment by police within the past 30 days.
For people of color, arrests often turn into imprisonment, whereas whites may face probation or shorter sentences for committing similar acts. To make matters more tragically comedic, the recent shift to legalize marijuana in several states has created a new class of mostly white entrepreneurs while thousands of young Black men and women remain imprisoned or with criminal records for using or selling the same substance.
This is business as usual in our criminal justice system — an accepted paradigm that encourages mass incarceration of people of color to continue. Though less crude than during and after Reconstruction, American politicians, media, and law enforcement continue to draw on the well-practiced art of stereotyping the “other” to justify discriminatory treatment.
Today, the United States has both the largest number of human beings behind bars (more than 2.4 million in federal, state, county, and other facilities) and also the highest percentage of its population (nearly one out of 100) locked away. Although Black men make up 6 percent of the population, they now account for nearly half of all prisoners.
After people are released from prison, their punishment continues. They face discrimination in applying for jobs, housing, and public assistance. Many are barred from voting for the rest of their lives.