A New Type of Slavery

            So many of our fellow human beings are victims of the drug culture, but also the War on Drugs. The problem is worse now than it has been ever before. I recently watched a video called The House I Live In, which is about the War on Drugs and how police profile specific types of people. After seeing the film, I agree with the director, Eugene Jarecki, that a targeted person is usually a poor, black male. Jarecki includes ideas from Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, who argues that incarceration is a new form of slavery. According to Alexander, slavery never died; first it was reborn with the Jim Crow Laws, and now with incarceration. Many people (including myself - prior to watching the video) wrongly believe that racial inequality is nowhere near as bad as it was during slavery. However, drug profiling has perpetuated dramatic inequality in America.

Jarecki’s argument that minorities are targeted by the War on Drugs reminded me of a Zine composed by Billy Dee. One of the slides had a drawing (shown above) of a few black people walking through the streets with a police car following them. The caption read “the Prison Industrial Complex targets people from certain neighborhoods, especially poor people, people of color, young people, and lgbtq people.”

According to an article in the Herald Sun, while blacks represent only about 11 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 53 percent of people serving time for drugs in North Carolina. Whites, the obvious majority in America, only accounted for 28 percent. These percentages remain relatively constant throughout the U.S. Because blacks make up the majority of people incarcerated for drug offenses, it seems logical to assume that the majority of drug dealers around the U.S. would also be black, right? WRONG! According to the 2004 Survey on Drug Use and Health, blacks only accounted for 15 percent of drug dealers (the great majority are white). In addition, the drug usage rates in blacks and whites were about equal. Given this data, there should be far more whites incarcerated than blacks because there are so many more whites in America. Also, the percentage of the black population incarcerated for drug offenses should be equal to that of whites since their drug usage rates are about the same. These statistics clearly show just how much racial inequality we still have today.

According to the New York Times, Michelle Alexander said that a “vast new system of racial and social control has emerged.” By locking up minorities, we are ensuring that they struggle with poverty and have minimal opportunities when they are released from jail. Even on parole, these people still will not have access to many of the benefits designed to help American citizens (such as financial aid and food stamps). They will often have trouble finding work because they have a criminal background. This systematic bias results in a permanent second-class citizenship for millions of Americans, much like the false sense of citizenship that the cruelty of slavery created for African Americans.