America’s War Against its Own People – The Racialisation of the War on Drugs

Storyville: As America remains embroiled in overseas conflict, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. For over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are more available today than ever before.

Filmed in more than twenty states, this film captures a definitive and heart-wrenching portrait of individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s longest war, revealing its profound human rights implications.

While recognising the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have instead treated it as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast political and economic machine that feeds largely on America’s poor, especially minority communities. Yet beyond simple misguided policy, the film investigates how political and economic corruption have fuelled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic and practical failures.

Ultimately, the documentary seeks, through compassionate inquiry, to promote public awareness of the history and contemporary mechanics of this human rights crisis and to begin a national conversation about its reform

The other night I saw a brilliant  documentary on BBC 4 called The House I live in.  The programme’s website states that the film explores

What caused the war? What perpetuates it? And what can be done to stop it?

However, what it really does is explore the racial history of USA’s addiction to the incarceration of racial minorities.  We can change the questions to

• Why have American governments militarised their relations with racial and social groups in the apparent attempt to control the production and consumption of ‘illicit’ drugs?
• Why is there a complete lack of integrity and bravery amongst America’s politicians, encouraging the racialisation of the ‘war on drugs’ and providing economic enticements for the systematic growth of the penal system and the construction of a legal system that jails more people than any other country in the world for non-violent crimes?
• Is there any way to end America’s war against its own people?

The film was made by the filmaker Eugene Jarecki and was first released in November 2012.  I don’t want to comment on Eugene or the use of his personal connection to one of the central characters in the film.  What I want to concentrate on is the story this film tells about how  the USA is engaged in a real war against many of its own people, and how this has been turned into a profitable exercise.

Over the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has cost more than $1 trillion dollars and accounted for over 45 million arrests. The US incarcerates almost 25% of the prisoners in the entire world although we have only 5% of the world’s population.

Black individuals comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of drug users, yet they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses and 56% of those incarcerated for drug crimes.

These are taken from the production notes.  They clearly display the central thesis of the film.  The film examines this through a number of themes:

The history of the criminalisation of certain drugs is the history of racial profiling.  In 1882 California passed a law prohibiting Opium.  Why?  Legislators said that they were trying to restrict the damaging effects of Opium addiction.  But the real reason was that Chinese workers were perceived to be ‘taking’ the jobs of white Americans.  Brought to the USA to build the transcontinental railway.  As hard working and trustworthy Chinese labour was sought for.  Politicians and labour leaders wanted to restrict Chinese entry to labour markets.  Opium provided the excuse needed to stigmatise the Chinese as a criminal community.  Though it was mainly middle and upper class Americans that enjoyed the Opium dens of San Francisco and other cities, and was a minority interest and caused no social distress.  The conspiracy worked.

This pattern was repeated in relation to Hispanics and Marijuana, and later African Americans and Black Caribbean’s in relation to Cocaine and then Heroin.  As one of the participants in the film noted this strategy works by first defining a population as criminal; this categorisation makes that population amenable to state and police intervention; which results in higher incidences of arrest and incarceration.

The criminal justice system is deliberately distorted, resulting in racial injustice.  The social and media hysteria created around crack cocaine is illustrative of how this works.  The US legislature passed a ruling which meant that somebody would have to possess 100g of cocaine powder to receive the same prison sentence as somebody possessing 1g of crack cocaine. This was later reduced to an 18:1 ratio in 2011.  Even though a great deal of ‘evidence‘ was rallied to support the tough stance on crack cocaine, other evidence has challenged these assertions.  The authorities, along with much of the media, created a moral climate conducive to the introduction of harsh and irrational sentencing.  The result of this disproportionate focus on crack cocaine is the massive criminalisation of black America, in particular black men.  Since it is often African Americans who consume and sell this drug they are the focus for police attention.  The imbalance in sentencing means that black men receive drastic sentences for non-violent crimes.

The hyper-marginalisation of Black America.  The increased social and economic marginalisation of Black America goes hand in hand with the militarisation of law and order.  The areas of American cities that once housed vibrant black working class communities have systematically been dis-invested in by the state and economy.  These neighbourhoods were never primarily black, as Italian or Irish neighbourhoods were never primarily Italian or Irish.  There was always a greater social mix than popular representations allowed for.  But the economic drivers that attracted large numbers of African Americans from the south to the industrial northern cities is the same factor that has seen the economic demise of these neighbourhoods.  Urban industrial growth drew people to Chicago, New York, Philadelphia  etc.  Economic restructuring through the 1970s onwards has seen the emptying out of working class neighbourhoods as the industries, and therefore the jobs, either went out to the suburbs or abroad.  Those who had the resources left.  those who didn’t stayed.  As this happened so shops, bars, banks and services left these neighbourhoods.  Denied access to legitimate economic resources in the harsh welfare climate of the USA people turned to the alternative economies.  Racist housing and employment practices, poor education and health services combined to marginalise these communities and make it possible for organised crime and the drugs economy to flourish.  

I have noted before that the scholar Loic Waquant has studied this phenomena in detail through such books as Punishing the Poor, Prisons of Poverty, Urban Outcasts, and Body and Soul.

This is a WAR. The term ‘War on Drugs’ is not an over-statement.  The USA has mobilised all arms of the state to target immense violence against the poorest of its citizens.  The right to ‘bear arms’ in the American Constitution was devised in response to a perceived threat from Imperial Britain against the young republic.  But it isn’t a foreign power that is attacking Black and Hispanic America – it is the American government itself.  The American government has harnessed the resources of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF and local law enforcement agencies in order to essentially act as forces of occupation. And has this worked? NO!

The war on drugs makes money. One of the most startling points made by the film was that war on America’s poorest citizens is making private enterprise a lot of money and is subsidising law enforcement.  The unfair sentencing policies requires more prisons; private companies target towns with poor economies in order to get them to petition to have a prison built in their juridiction; this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy because being the largest employer that town, and more especially its politicians, are never going to argue for prison closures. Asset forfeiture, the seizing of property and money believed to be the result fo criminal activity (in this case drugs) is increasing used by local law enforcement agencies as an income stream.  A good way to make up for state cuts is to target Black and Hispanic communities.  

Political careers are made on the Ware on Drugs. Politicians are cowards.  That was one of the sub-texts of the film.  Richard Nixon invented the War on Drugs in 1971 in order to be re-elected.  And that’s how its has gone since.  The film succinctly demonstrates how politicians at all levels feed the drugs war frenzy in their bids tobe elected or re-elected, intensifying and expanding incarceration.  Even when Black or Hispanic politicians are involved this is a system of WHITE SUPREMACY.

And now its time for the white working class.  ‘Meth Amphetamine‘ – that’s the new focus for manufactured fear that will feed profits into the private prison companies, get politicians elected, and subsidise local law enforcement. It is characterised as the White Man’s Crack.  The white working class, now increasingly cut out of the modern economy are turning to the alternative economy.  What a surprise.  We need to remember that ‘white’ is a category that historically has not always included all those who might be called ‘caucasian‘.  It is a label of inclusion in the dominant cultural group.  For instance the Irish in America were not regarding as white at all until they became useful to the economy and political system of privilege and power.

So, the War on Drugs is a War on the Outcasts of America, sustaining Rich White Supremacy!