Nick Miller
Post #4
Argument Analysis
The New Jim Crow
Nick M
Post 4
Argument Analysis
The New Jim Crow
In this section of The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander discusses some new issues but also reiterates some of her previous talking points. Unsurprisingly, then, there were some significant points of contention between her views and my own. I want to focus on one of those for this post.
If Alexander's assertions about a racist drug war, discrimination in drug sentencing, and other indicators of "racism" in our criminal justice system persist today, it is logical that current statistics would demonstrate continuity with the claims she made about the early 2000s, for example.
On page 201, Alexander claims that the Drug War continues to be racist because it is "Waged in African American and minority communities." However, especially of late, this is no longer true. In 1990, the Opioid epidemic began - an epidemic in which people (mostly whites) became addicted to opioid drugs.
It was interesting to read about how the government addressed this new threat - a mostly white threat.
Put shortly, in the same manner.
According to Michelle Chen, who writes for The Nation website and magazine, "Whites are increasingly coming into contact with the criminal justice system, and a lot of that can be traced to one source: the opioid epidemic."
To add a bit of context, The Nation refers to itself as "principled and progressive" - not that it matters very much, since their factual reporting according to Mediabiasfactcheck (a tool designed to show political bias in media) ranks their factual reporting as "high." However, I figured that I would include it anyway.
Since 1990 - the beginning of the opioid crisis - whites have seen a 90% increase in their incarceration rates, which is primarily driven by drug offenses. Chen then continues, "The rise in incarceration that has coincided with the opioid epidemic was not inevitable; it has stemmed from a lack of treatment-based alternatives, as well as outmoded, punitive sentencing practices." These are the same sentencing practices that allegedly were designed to be biased against blacks.
According to a new study by the Vera Institute, the racial makeup of America's prisons has been swiftly changing since the 1990s. Chen, who summarizes the report in her article for The Nation writes, "The number of white people in jail has soared over the past two decades, the analysis found, while the black jail population has steadily declined."
In this period, by Alexander's admission, there have been few policies that would account for a complete reversal of America's incarceration demographics. The entire point of her 2010 book The New Jim Crow was to call for such changes in order to reverse trends she saw as racist.
The point? America's prison demographics are changing, and they are doing so with little action by the federal government - all in a time when a supposedly "racist" Drug War is "targeting" minority communities.
Alexander admits some of this on page 204 when she discusses "White victims of a racial caste." In this subsection, she claims that whites go to prison to "preserve the image of a colorblind criminal justice system and to maintain our self-image as a fair and unbiased people."
In the context of the Opioid Crisis, this is ridiculous. If the framers of America's prison structure were (and continue to be) racially biased against African Americans and only use drug prosecution as a pretext to incarcerate them, they would not have stood for a system that, over the past 20 years, has led to a dramatic shift in America's prison populations.
The system wouldn't employ tactics against whites that were designed for blacks if the system were designed in such a way to discriminate against blacks.
Michelle Chen summarizes as much towards the end of her article in The Nation.
She writes, "The new demography of American jails seems to mark a carbon-copy of the zero-tolerance, authoritarian law-enforcement tactics earlier deployed to police communities of color."
So what does this all mean? In my view, this is evidence that the law is the law, and the patterns we have seen in drug crime prosecution rates (in recent memory) are primarily due to factors other than an overarching conspiracy to discriminate against African-Americans. I have gone into what I suspect these factors are, so I will not reiterate them for this post in the interest of time.
Again, though, if such a conspiracy existed, influence from racists would have transformed opioid laws to stop whites from going to prison - but that hasn't happened, because America is not actually subject to such influence.
In short, Whites are going to prison in droves for opioid offenses because whites use opioid drugs more often, and are at a higher risk of prosecution because they live in suburban areas where the crisis is most prevalent. Similarly, Blacks from the inner city are more likely to be busted for street drugs like crack cocaine.
In my view, this undermines the notion that America's current "Drug War" is racist. After all, why would politicians fight a war against white America if they were genuinely interested in targeting predominately minorities? They wouldn't.
As a qualifier, this post was centered primarily on how the Drug War has been conducted since 1990. I have conceded in previous posts that some disturbing statistics need to be investigated further, especially statistics deriving from the 1980s. However, these are my thoughts in response to Alexander's assertion that a racial caste still exists today. Because of the way the Opioid crisis has played out - with a disproportionate amount of whites going to prison for Opioid offenses - I don't buy that particular part of her argument.
As always, I welcome any feedback, and I would be happy to engage with anyone who may disagree with any claim(s) I made in this post in a civil discussion.
Citation
Chen, Michelle. "Is the Opioid Crisis Leading to a Spike in the White
Incarceration Rate?" The Nation, 7 Mar. 2018, www.thenation.com/article/
archive/the-opioid-crisis-has-led-to-a-spike-in-the-white-incarceration-rate/.
Accessed 30 Mar. 2020.
Nick, how does this portion of Chen's article relate to your points?
ReplyDeleteShe writes that, "After years of drug policies that dealt harsh punishment to marginalized communities, civil-rights groups and political officials have succeeded in reining in some of the toughest criminal-justice policies and promoted alternatives to incarceration." Doesn't it seem like some of the problems Alexander has discussed, such as mandatory minimum sentences, have changed over the years?
I don't disagree that the opioid crisis has led to an influx of whites into the prison system, but even Chen admits that African Americans are disproportionately represented in the prison system. I don't think the cause is due to blatant racism, but rather a system of small issues and problems that all add up to a bigger one.