The war on drugs is a tricky one—I’m against it myself, but I’ve seen black people be in favor of it, and in favor of closed borders. too.
Neither the war on drugs nor severe border restrictions (which I’m also against) are overtly racist the way Jim Crow was, and that makes them harder to fight. It’s much easier to frame the war on drugs and border restrictions as the sorts of thing a normal government ought to do—some combination of help and punishment and keeping people who don’t use drugs safe for the war on drugs, and safety and control for border restrictions.
Something got accomplished to lower the racism level in the US, even though much less was accomplished than either of us want. I’m inclined to think that the real problem is that we have no idea how to reliably get people to be less prejudiced, and institutional problems will get re-established as long as a lot of people want them to persist.
This isn’t a counsel of despair—it’s a recommendation to keep trying to figure out what might work.
The war on drugs is a tricky one—I’m against it myself, but I’ve seen black people be in favor of it, and in favor of closed borders. too.
Neither the war on drugs nor severe border restrictions (which I’m also against) are overtly racist the way Jim Crow was, and that makes them harder to fight. It’s much easier to frame the war on drugs and border restrictions as the sorts of thing a normal government ought to do—some combination of help and punishment and keeping people who don’t use drugs safe for the war on drugs, and safety and control for border restrictions.
Something got accomplished to lower the racism level in the US, even though much less was accomplished than either of us want. I’m inclined to think that the real problem is that we have no idea how to reliably get people to be less prejudiced, and institutional problems will get re-established as long as a lot of people want them to persist.
This isn’t a counsel of despair—it’s a recommendation to keep trying to figure out what might work.