Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   PhytoExtractum Kratom Powder for Sale   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
Offlinemonkeybus
Hare Krishna
 User Gallery


Registered: 07/29/07
Posts: 521
Last seen: 1 year, 10 months
America's new Jim Crow system * 4
    #14222637 - 04/01/11 06:38 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

This is the link

America's new Jim Crow system

The US war on drugs created a whole new generation of the dispossessed, with millions of black people denied their rights



President Barack Obama Despite voting in its first black president in Barack Obama, data shows much of black progress in America is a myth.

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation's "triumph over race". There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalised, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.
tom This article first appeared on TomDispatch

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don't like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the "era of colourblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

• There are more African American adults under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began.

• As of 2004, more African American men were disfranchised (due to felon disfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the 15th amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labelled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste – not class, caste – permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

There is, of course, a colourblind explanation for all this: crime rates. Our prison population has exploded from about 300,000 to more than 2 million in a few short decades, it is said, because of rampant crime. We're told that the reason so many black and brown men find themselves behind bars and ushered into a permanent, second-class status is because they happen to be the bad guys.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades – they are currently at historical lows – but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the "war on drugs" and the "get tough movement". Drug offences alone accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, between 1985 to 2000, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.

The drug war has been brutal, but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of colour, even though studies consistently show that people of all colours use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youths are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youths. They also have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.

That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation's prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison.

This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That's why the drug war is waged in poor communities of colour and not middle-class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it's all about violent crime.

Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working-class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing and affirmative action.

A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicising inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.

The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes – sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.

Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove that they could be even tougher on the dark-skinned pariahs. In President Bill Clinton's boastful words: "I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I'm soft on crime." The facts bear him out. Clinton's "tough on crime" policies resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. He and the "New Democrats" championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how minor the offence) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps, for life. Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic and social life is now perfectly legal, if you've been labelled a felon.

But what about all those violent criminals and drug kingpins? Isn't the drug war waged in ghetto communities because that's where the violent offenders can be found? The answer is yes … in made-for-TV movies. In real life, the answer is no.

Federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses. What gets rewarded in this war is sheer numbers of drug arrests. To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use 80% of the cash, cars and homes seized from drug suspects, thus granting law enforcement a direct monetary interest in the profitability of the drug market.

The results have been predictable: with black people rounded up en masse for relatively minor, nonviolent drug offences. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, only one out of five for sales. Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s – the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war – nearly 80% of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city.

In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time – a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of colour are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for.

Affirmative action, though, has put a happy face on this racial reality. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and become CEOs or corporate lawyers – not to mention president of the United States – causes us all to marvel at what a long way we've come.

Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. Nearly a quarter of African Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same percentage as in 1968. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in developing countries. And that's with affirmative action.

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our "colourblind" society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure – the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.


Edited by monkeybus (04/01/11 06:40 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineHumility
Working on it
 User Gallery


Registered: 10/07/08
Posts: 6,745
Last seen: 6 years, 11 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: monkeybus]
    #14222748 - 04/01/11 07:12 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

What a great article.  Really tells the truth about what's going on.


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibletito123
Male

Registered: 01/23/10
Posts: 3,006
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: Humility]
    #14222817 - 04/01/11 07:26 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

how do blacks get caught more than white folks?

i know police are probably around black neighborhoods more than white neighborhoods but thats still not a reason for them being busted more often


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleCyclohexylamine
Turn on, Tune in, Drop out
 User Gallery


Registered: 09/08/10
Posts: 14,327
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: tito123]
    #14222933 - 04/01/11 07:52 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

tito123 said:
how do blacks get caught more than white folks?

i know police are probably around black neighborhoods more than white neighborhoods but thats still not a reason for them being busted more often




Its a little thing called profiling.
It happens all the time.
For example, back in december a cop gave me a ticket for "jaywalking" in a mother fucking parking lot. I was in a large group of people walking from the parking lot into the store and he singled me out.
Obviously I filed a complaint, long story short it was decided in my favor and the fucker has to complete customer service training :laugh: and has a mark on his record.

When cops single out certain people, the percentages of those people being charged with something goes up.


--------------------
Yes this is tymo - I just changed my name

Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to awake from that dream? How would you know the difference between that dream world and the real world?


There is NOTHING better than feeling that warm dissociative fuzz creeping up your body from IM K
Something abut that anaesthetic rush... :inlove:

Qualitative Research Chemical Effects and Experiences
The Wonderful World of Methoxetamine
The 3-Meo-PCP Chapters, Part One


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinemonkeybus
Hare Krishna
 User Gallery


Registered: 07/29/07
Posts: 521
Last seen: 1 year, 10 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: tito123]
    #14222952 - 04/01/11 07:57 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

[how do blacks get caught more than white folks?

i know police are probably around black neighborhoods more than white neighborhoods but thats still not a reason for them being busted more often /quote]

I actually thought this was a very sub-par joke.  I didn't even bother replying.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibletito123
Male

Registered: 01/23/10
Posts: 3,006
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: monkeybus]
    #14222983 - 04/01/11 08:01 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

yeah i knew they got profiled and cant afford lawyers a lot of times and basically get their rights taken away but i just dont understand how they could make up 80% of people in some jails

its probably just because i dont live around black neighborhoods and havent experienced it


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisiblesmokintheherb
Heart black as lungs
Male


Registered: 02/15/08
Posts: 359
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: tito123]
    #14222984 - 04/01/11 08:01 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

tito123 said:
how do blacks get caught more than white folks?

i know police are probably around black neighborhoods more than white neighborhoods but thats still not a reason for them being busted more often




Well if police officers were machines and did their job completely without bias, then you'd have quite a point here. However, they are only human as are the rest of us.

For a little more understanding I'll give you a little story about myself.

I come from a Southern suburban town. I picked up substance use in high school. Back in my more careless days, I regularly drove and smoke, or drove on DXM, alcohol, acid, shrooms. I have an extreme ability to focus my mind, and doing this was never a problem, even though I think I was an idiot for doing it.
Because it easily could have been.

I was pulled over under the influence of various substances and with various amounts of substances in my car. I would guesstimate on the order of 10-12 times in a three year period.

Now thats kind of a lot of times to be talking to a cop being fucked up.
Never once was I caught, and only a few suspected. Only had to do a field sobriety test once.
It never even crossed the cops mind to search my car.
That's only happened twice, and neither time was there ANY  illegal substance.

The first time, my friend Devon (a black dude) was riding with me to taco bell. I was pulled over because my headlight went out.
The cops insisted on searching my car.

The second time, the cop asked me (in a peevish, almost embarressed tone) if there was anything in my car. I said no, he said ok.

That is the state of things.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinemylfgur
Untitled
Male User Gallery


Registered: 05/23/10
Posts: 1,282
Loc: Ohio Flag
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: monkeybus]
    #14223926 - 04/01/11 11:02 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

monkeybus said:


• There are more African American adults under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began.

• As of 2004, more African American men were disfranchised (due to felon disfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the 15th amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.




all of these three points can be discarded because of the population difference in the times they're comparing. Of course there are more african americans in jail now than there were enslaved. but I think that percentwise we'd see a less significant number.

that being said i totally agree with the spirit of the article

but this guy's comment is pretty good
Quote:

gwillikers
"The disintegration of the black family is the result of the social welfare state which encourages fatherless families; the loss of personal responsibility for one's actions; a culture that glorifies baby mama's; and a culture of victimihood.

Simple fact is is that crack is like cocaine on steroids and a far worse drug. Its sad some communities seem to prefer but here, the lily white community of Charleston has hada fixation with PCP since the 70's that doesn't seem to exist anywhere so there's no judging for tatse.

Amazing that the problem is always because of other people. Never any personal responsibility. Far be it from me t osuggest that problem about imprisonment is pretty simple: stop glorifying thug life; street cred; etc. Stop people from referring to black whildren who would rather study than play hoops as "trying to be white" or "oreos",; understand that the Black lawyer; doctor; accountant should be the figures you glorify and not people like Kobe Bryant. Have people like Jaylen Rose apologize to Grant Hill for referring to him as an Uncle Tom and apologize publicly with a mea culpa."




--------------------


Edited by mylfgur (04/01/11 11:18 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineAlan RockefellerM
Mycologist
Male User Gallery

Registered: 03/10/07
Posts: 48,276
Last seen: 12 hours, 9 minutes
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: tito123]
    #14224477 - 04/02/11 01:14 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

tito123 said:
how do blacks get caught more than white folks?





Black people just look guilty, and having a black person in your car is a sure way to get pulled over and often searched.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisiblesmokintheherb
Heart black as lungs
Male


Registered: 02/15/08
Posts: 359
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
    #14224742 - 04/02/11 03:13 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Alan Rockefeller said:
Quote:

tito123 said:
how do blacks get caught more than white folks?





Black people just look guilty, and having a black person in your car is a sure way to get pulled over and often searched.




He speaketh the truth. :jah:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineshroom_boom
boomer
Male User Gallery

Registered: 03/28/11
Posts: 61
Loc: michigan
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: monkeybus]
    #14224876 - 04/02/11 06:07 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

i understand where this article is coming from but isn't this a problem for the nation yes every day black men and women are single out by police but so as Muslims and Mexicans and as far as small town white kids not getting profiled i dont think thats true at least where i live where if your between the ages of 16 to 25 you are very likely to get pulled over i have been searched multiples times and even arrest for having 2 fake twenty on me when that same day down the road an old lady had 200 dollars in fake twenty on her and they said sorry for your inconvenience so profiling happens everywhere and every day Americans everywhere rights are being walked on and the only way we can move passed this is to come together as a country without race or age being a factor to say that this kinda thing is wrong and we wont stand for it


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinedemon66
Stranger
 User Gallery

Registered: 08/19/10
Posts: 677
Last seen: 11 years, 9 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: shroom_boom]
    #14225200 - 04/02/11 09:28 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

this is why black people get profiled



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineSouljaSmokinDoja
The Ancestors' Ancestor
Male User Gallery

Registered: 08/20/10
Posts: 608
Loc: GodBody
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: demon66]
    #14225305 - 04/02/11 10:08 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

demon66 said:
this is why black people get profiled






True, but you gotta understand how the "War on Drugs" created this. African Americans went from probaly the most unified race in the country to the most divided in the span of 40 - 50 years man. The blame is not solely on the government but we all know they orchestrated the downfall of African Americans with strategy...


--------------------
RED BLACK  GREEN

‘spiritual technology’: don’t need a cell phone when he can use telepathy - don’t need a camera when he has a photo-graphic memory - don’t need GPS when his whole being is connected to the earth – don’t need military cloaking devices when he can change his physical signature on a dimensional level – don’t need no books when he has direct access to the akashic records - don’t need a space ship when he can go where he wants in the dream-time – don’t need our culture when the cosmos is his operating system.. GodBody

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineHumility
Working on it
 User Gallery


Registered: 10/07/08
Posts: 6,745
Last seen: 6 years, 11 months
Re: America's new Jim Crow system [Re: SouljaSmokinDoja]
    #14226044 - 04/02/11 01:19 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

*sigh* that shit just pisses me off.

The worst part is that ghetto folk glamorize being retail pawns in the dope business.  The most well-to-do gangster ass motherfucker from the hood is touching pennies on the dollar of real coke and dope money.

Most folks don't even get out of the game what they put in to it.  It's really embarrassing and kinda makes you feel sorry for them.

And they act like they've got shit on lock :facepalm3:


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   PhytoExtractum Kratom Powder for Sale   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* With pot and porn outstripping corn, America's black economy motamanM 2,349 2 05/02/03 06:53 PM
by Anonymous
* Americans turn to Canada for 'illegal' drugs motamanM 2,123 2 12/26/03 11:55 PM
by DailyPot
* Marijuana ads prove unnecessary and a waste of American tax motamanM 2,492 1 04/22/03 08:42 AM
by chodamunky
* GW to take cannabis painkiller to America veggieM 1,293 5 03/02/05 09:51 PM
by Twirling
* American and Canadian Officials Bust Drug Ring snatchcakes 2,290 1 04/01/04 08:02 AM
by vladk
* U.S. Develops Urban Surveillance System, Hi Big Brother Lana 1,536 1 07/03/03 04:05 AM
by Joshua
* Heroin hits small-town America motamanM 2,660 1 05/07/03 09:23 AM
by GGreatOne234
* matts 2,929 11 01/08/03 11:31 AM
by bowling-name

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,520 topic views. 0 members, 1 guests and 3 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.025 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.