Michelle Alexander: White Men Get Rich from Legal Pot, Black Men Stay in Prison

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Ever since Colorado and Washington made the unprecedented move to legalize recreational pot last year, excitement and stories of unfettered success have billowed into the air. Colorado's marijuana tax revenue far exceeded expectations, bringing a whopping $185 million [3] to the state and tourists are lining up to taste the budding culture (pun intended). Several other states are now looking to follow suit and legalize.

But the ramifications of this momentous shift are left unaddressed. When you flick on the TV to a segment about the flowering pot market in Colorado, you'll find that the faces of the movement are primarily white and male. Meanwhile, many of the more than 210,000 people [4] who were arrested for marijuana possession in Colorado between 1986 and 2010 according to a report from the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, remain behind bars. Thousands of black men and boys still sit in prisons for possession of the very plant that's making those white guys on TV rich.

“In many ways the imagery doesn't sit right,” said Michelle Alexander, associate professor of law at Ohio State University and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [5] in a public conversation [6] on March 6 with Asha Bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance [7]. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”

Alexander said she is “thrilled” that Colorado and Washington have legalized pot and that Washington D.C. decriminalized possession of small amounts earlier this month. But she said she’s noticed "warning signs" of a troubling trend emerging in the pot legalization movement: Whites—men in particular—are the face of the movement, and the emerging pot industry. (A recent In These Timesarticle titled “The Unbearable Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization [8],” summarize this trend.)

Alexander said for 40 years poor communities of color have experienced the wrath of the war on drugs.

“Black men and boys” have been the target of the war on drugs’ racist policies—stopped, frisked and disturbed—“often before they’re old enough to vote,” she said. Those youths are arrested most often for nonviolent first offenses that would go ignored in middle-class white neighborhoods.

“We arrest these kids at young ages, saddle them with criminal records, throw them in cages, and then release them into a parallel social universe in which the very civil and human rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights movement no longer apply to them for the rest of their lives,” she said. “They can be discriminated against [when it comes to] employment, housing, access to education, public benefits. They're locked into a permanent second-class status for life. And we’ve done this in precisely the communities that were most in need of our support.”

As Asha Bandele of DPA pointed out during the conversation, the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Today, 2.2 million people are in prison or jail and 7.7 million are under the control of the criminal justice system, with African American boys and men—and now women—making up a disproportionate number of those imprisoned.

Alexander’s book was published four years ago and spent 75 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, helping to bring mass incarceration to the forefront of the national discussion.

Alexander said over the last four years, as she’s been traveling from state to state speaking to audiences from prisons to universities about her book, she’s witnessed an “awakening.” More and more people are talking about mass incarceration, racism and the war on drugs.

Often when people talk about the reasons certain communities are impoverished or lack education they blame the personal choices or moral shortcomings of the people in those communities, but that way of looking at things has got it backwards, she said.

“That these communities are poor and have failing schools and have broken rules is not because of their personal failings but because we’ve declared war on them,” she said. “We’ve spent billions of dollars building prisons and allowing schools to fail. We’ve decimated these communities by shuttling young people from their underfunded schools to these brand new, high tech prisons. We’ve begun targeting children in these communities at young ages.”

Alexander cautioned that drug policy activists need to keep this disparity in mind and cultivate a conversation about repairing the damages done by the systemic racism of the war on drugs, before cashing in on legalization.

“After waging a brutal war on poor communities of color, a drug war that has decimated families, spread despair and hopelessness through entire communities, and a war that has fanned the flames of the very violence it was supposedly intended to address and control; after pouring billions of dollars into prisons and allowing schools to fail; we’re gonna simply say, we’re done now?” Alexander said. “I think we have to be willing, as we’re talking about legalization, to also start talking about reparations for the war on drugs, how to repair the harm caused.”

Alexander used the example of post-apartheid reparations in South Africa to point out the way a society can and should own up to its past mistakes. After apartheid ended, the nation passed a law called the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995. Under the new law, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to "elicit truth" about the human rights violations that had occurred. The commission recorded the statements of witnesses who endured "gross human rights violations" and facilitated public hearings. Those who had committed violence could request amnesty from civil and criminal prosecution in order to share testimony about what they'd done with the commission.

“At the end of apartheid in South Africa there was an understanding that there could be no healing, no progress, no reconciliation without truth,” she said. “You can’t just destroy a people and then say ‘It’s over, we’re stopping now.’ You have to be willing to deal with the truth, deal with the history openly and honestly.”

Alexander pointed to America’s tendency to shove its racist legacies under the rug rather than own up to them. When the civil war ended, slaves were free on paper but they were left with nothing—“no 40 acres and a mule, nothing,” Alexander said. The only option was to work low-paying contract jobs for the same slave owners who had previously brutalized them.

“And after a brief period of reconstruction a new caste system was imposed—Jim Crow—and another extraordinary movement arose and brought the old Jim Crow to its knees,” she said. “Americans said, OK, we’ll stop now. We’ll take down the whites-only signs, we’ll stop doing that. But there were not reparations for slavery, not for Jim Crow, and scarcely an acknowledgement of the harm done except for Martin Luther King Day, one day out of the year. And I feel like, here we go again.”

http://www.alternet.org/print/drugs/michelle-alexander-white-men-get-rich-legal-pot-black-men-stay-prison

[deleted-05292014 331]

Asha Bandele is one of my favorite writers and poets. I remember first being introduced to her almost 15-20 years ago.

I'm not sure if marijuana should be legalized completely and if that is good for our country but marijuana definitely needs to be decriminalized throughout the U.S. Everyone in jail should be released if they are non-violent offenders and have no ties to organized crime or any violent organizations. We are spending money to create hardened criminals.

Privatization of prisons is not good for America. Make a profit off of putting people in prison, yeah I don't see how that could go wrong.

[luckytxn 2,264]

She is right but to an extent. The war on drugs is a morals war. The Feds are telling the populace that our body is not our own and regulate what we can ingest. The last I read a few years ago about 60% of the people in prison was because of drugs. It just seemed that we were putting in prisons addicts. Addicks can be treated better and more cheap in other ways.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

She is right but to an extent. The war on drugs is a morals war. The Feds are telling the populace that our body is not our own and regulate what we can ingest. The last I read a few years ago about 60% of the people in prison was because of drugs. It just seemed that we were putting in prisons addicts. Addicks can be treated better and more cheap in other ways.

If the concern was people, then that would make perfect sense. But the concern is profit margins of the prison industrial complex. Prison corporations have to grow, you know? They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to lobby for the incarceration of as many people as possible for the longest terms possible - it's the only way they can grow their business and their bottom lines. It's how they stay viable. So hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives are ruined in the process. Who cares? The prison industrial complex, its principals and investors certainly don't. Bottom line is that some people get rich and that is what it's all about. Not morals. Profits. Always follow the money...

Edited March 15, 2014 by Mr. Big Dog

[Darnell 8,478]

So did she submit a business plan and get it funded, to set up a co-op of black farmers in the states where pot is legal? if no, why no?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

So did she submit a business plan and get it funded, to set up a co-op of black farmers in the states where pot is legal? if no, why no?

[Darnell 8,478]

na, if she's not participating in our capitalistic society in a way that's meaningful,

she won't have the influence to affect the changes she wants.

Apologies that yer missing that.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

na, if she's not participating in our capitalistic society in a way that's meaningful,

she won't have the influence to affect the changes she wants.

Apologies that yer missing that.

And still...

[Darnell 8,478]

her issues are solved with money. I'm sorry yer not seeing that.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

her issues are solved with money. I'm sorry yer not seeing that.

No, the issues are not solved with money. Try to read the article again.

[Darnell 8,478]

But I read it twice !

Seriously, the problems listed are solved with money, each an every time.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

But I read it twice !

Seriously, the problems listed are solved with money, each an every time.

Bull. Start with wiping criminal slates clean if all they contain are charges on drugs that are legal now. Be sure to re-establish the civil rights of those that have been robbed of them for nothing but drug related criminal records. That's not solved with money. But it would be an important first step. Set them free with clean records. Give them the shot at life which they never had. Not about money. It's about what's right and it's about dignity and a fighting chance in life.

[Merle 458]

I'm interested to see what is going to happen to all these places that have "legal" pot when the administration in D.C. changes to one that will enforce the law.

[lostinblue 1,989]

So I guess there are no white folks in jail for breaking this drug law?

[luckytxn 2,264]

War on drugs was around before they had private prisons.

If the concern was people, then that would make perfect sense. But the concern is profit margins of the prison industrial complex. Prison corporations have to grow, you know? They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to lobby for the incarceration of as many people as possible for the longest terms possible - it's the only way they can grow their business and their bottom lines. It's how they stay viable. So hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives are ruined in the process. Who cares? The prison industrial complex, its principals and investors certainly don't. Bottom line is that some people get rich and that is what it's all about. Not morals. Profits. Always follow the money...