We’ve all learned about this in history class; before the 1960s if a black man and a white man committed the same crime the black man was hanged and the white man got a slap on the wrist. But the Civil Rights Movement happened and we are now all truly equal under the law, right? Wrong.
I’m assuming we’ve all heard about Hillary Clinton’s comment in 1996 regarding how Black youth should be brought “to heel,” essentially comparing African Americans do dogs who need training. The largest group of data supporting sentencing inequalities in America, that I have found, is in drug sentencing.
I’ve written a whole research paper on this based on a research by Kristian Lum. There have been numerous studies done on this, but I will just state a few facts.
- White people use drugs at rates 5 times higher than blacks, though blacks are incarcerated for drug use 10 times more often than whites. This means if Connor and DeShawn both smoke a blunt, and DeShawn gets arrested, it would take 50 Connors before one gets arrested. You can read it for yourself here.
- In 2001 Dr. Darrell Steffensmeier, a criminologist and sociologist, published a research paper with Dr. Stephen Demuth stating that among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, White people received the most sympathetic sentences, while Hispanics got the harshest.
- In case you didn’t know, Pres. Bill Clinton denied a recommendation to eliminate differences between crack and cocaine sentencing. Crack is used more by blacks and carries more severe sentences and cocaine is used primarily by whites so it’s clearly no big deal.
Still don’t believe? Bobby Shmurda is currently required to plead guilty and serve a minimum of 7 years for involvement in a “drug war.” This case would easily be eliminated if marijuana was legalized. Though, Brock Turner, a convicted rapist, was only sentenced to 6 months in jail, only three of which he served.
The best part of it is — The Drug War was first declared in 1971 by Richard Nixon, right after the Civil Rights Movement. The 15th amendment went into effect in 1870 and made it illegal for Blacks to be denied the right to vote. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1966 and made discrimination illegal and closed voting loopholes. Since 1971 the rate of African American incarceration increased, up to 1/3 of Black males expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime. Which also means up to 1/3 of Black males will lose their right to vote.
The issue of mass incarceration, especially in Black communities, is the main reason out of many of why I believe marijuana has to be legalized. It is not good enough to just legalize marijuana, we must also close sentencing gaps for every. Single. Crime. White privilege is an issue when we talk about the availability of opportunities, but when the conversation shifts to discussing the freedom of a people, differences in treatment are intolerable. I’ve attached a video by Hank Green about the cost of incarcerations.
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