Jay Z: The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail
September 15, 2016 @ 9:29 AM EDT
News
D’Evils
Featuring illustrations by artist Molly Crabapple, Jay Z narrates a piece on systematic racism and the war on drugs. Produced by Dream Hampton.
The film “…takes us from the Nixon administration and the Rockefeller drug laws — the draconian 1973 statutes enacted in New York that exploded the state’s prison population and ushered in a period of similar sentencing schemes for other states — through the extraordinary growth in our nation’s prison population to the emerging above ground marijuana market of today. We learn how African-Americans can make up around 13 percent of the United States population — yet 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, even though they use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites.”
This is exactly what Snoop was talking about on the Breakfast club last month.
War on drugs:
– White collar sells weed = businessmen
– Minority sells weed = Not in jail for avoiding taxes but for selling illegal substances
If weed is ruled a legal substance in some states in AMERICA then why are people still in jail for weed?
bc it is illegal in the rest of the states…
STFU Slave coon bitch.
im white…
No wonder you justify stupid ass laws.
its not a justification its just a simple fact… u said why does someone get arrested for something illegal in one state when it is legal in another? bc it is illegal in that state, plain and simple… is the law stupid? yes, but if u know it is illegal then u know why u get arrested for it
I never said that. Learn to read.
Slavery was legal at one time. Women voting and working was illegal. Marrying your sister was legal.
Just because it’s the law, doesn’t mean it’s right. Only dumbass crackers or Uncle Tom
Coons defend bullshit like this.
White man sells drugs, makes $25m. Black male sells drugs, gets 25 years.
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FK YO FEELINGS!!!
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Might as well legealize it already.
Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs. So the police can bother me.
The real bad guys are the drug users. Kill them too and everybody will be out of business.
U lost all credibility with that comment.
FIEND
He’s LITERALLY a talking head. Kid is a fucking scumbag internet troll.
All of those facts, cause and effect, and truth (harsh but true) were in this short video. It painted a picture (literally) of a flawed system.
FACTS
1. Predominantly black neighborhoods—>(Unfortunately) Higher rates of violent crime—>Greater police presence leading to more black people arrested on drug charges.
It has very little to do with racial discrimination.
2. The people who wanted stiffer penalties for crack were primarily black Americans & their elected representatives who saw that poison destroy their communities and family members.
3. It is a left wing fiction that there is ‘mass’ incarceration of black Americans in the United States. Do you know the percentage of black Americans in prison? Is it 20%? 15? 10? 5? Nope, 1.2%.
4. The prison population is primarily filled with violent offenders not non-violent drug pushers. It is no coincidence that when Bill Clinton pushed for stiffer prison sentences in the 1990s, what followed was the sharpest decline in violent crime in US history.
This piece is riddled with lies.
Who sent you?
The police knew that building projects, sectioning off cities, redlining, cutting economic development, social programs, and turning a blind eye to weapons and drugs manufactured outside of these poor neighborhoods but then pouring in by the metric tons would lead to crime. That crime was developed by design and there is over 300 years of racial discrimination as evidence of its existence toward black people in america. So when you say it has very little to do with the situation? The history of america says otherwise.
The people who wanted stiffer sentences for crack penalties were not black. They were whites sitting up on Capital Hill and behind the cameras of the media which brainwash people like you into believing black people wanted prisons built for their own people rather then the ending of disenfranchisement and oppression at the hands of their own government.
Mass incarceration is not a fiction, its a fact and the last three generations of black people that have been subject to mandatory sentencing and being stamped as a criminal backs that up.
Yes you have a large percentage of people in prison for violent crime, you also have a large percentage of people going back n forth to prison for non violent crimes.
Bodied him.
Wow. Your first paragraph is so crazy it saved me from even skimming the rest of your text. 300 years? What? Yeah they we’re slaves dude. It is how it goes. This is everybodies human history.. Should we be like Saudi and keep the slaves? Are you serious? THey we’re free’d. As long as it keeps getting brought up we can’t move past it. Sorry dude that is life. Move past it or don’t but other minorities have nowhere near the same incarceration/crime rates among all of the races.
Read it again bruh. I went beyond slavery… I spoke about multiple factors that continued after the 1860s. You say this is everybodies human history? No, its not. We talking about specifically black people’s history in america and its NOT the same history as other races, its NOT the same history or racism, its NOT the same history of racial discrimination, and its NOT the same history or systematic oppression. Yeah people like you wanna just tell black people to “get over it” because you don’t wanna acknowledge the reality of it. You wanna suggest everything’s been cool since Abraham Lincoln? No.
You say no other races have the same amount of incarceration rates? Well no other race has been targeted like black people have and no other race has been forced to endure the same amount of oppressive conditions as black people for as long with the same intensity and hatred. Native Americans have endured worse but thats it. Now there are some that will argue this point? They are delusional for trying to compare another races history in america in terms of racial oppression to black peoples.
Black people weren’t “freed” either. Black people fought for their freedom (Gullah Wars) and then had to keep fighting for the right to have freedom in all of its aspects.
No one brings it up unless a gun is shoved in our face. This is a rap blog. And you’re trying to tell black people how to feel.
Take your lukewarm racist ass to another genre. Every rapper who’s dick you suck would slap the fire out your mouth for saying this dumb shit.
I appreciate the response even if I disagree. This is an honest discussion that needs to be had all across America.
The places that are now ‘the projects’ were once prosperous and vibrant success stories. However, white flight combined with an influx of black Americans (a subset of whom had a taste for criminality) turned them into Chiraq and Fayetnam. Police have no capacity to ‘cut economic development’. Lack of investment in such areas is a direct result of the alarming rates of violent crime. Tell me, why would anyone build a library, a cinema, a museum or a mall in an area with perpetual looting, killings and vandalism?
What ‘social programs’ were cut? Surely you don’t mean the wasteful & ever growing welfare state that has incentivised single motherhood & poor work ethic in black communities.
Yes , there’s a tragic history of racism in America but it certainly hasn’t been restricted to black Americans (even though they’ve definitely had it the worst). The Japanese, the Jews and the Irish have been treated disgracefully in certain time periods of the USA. Denied citizenship, shut out of certain jobs, stripped of their possessions, trapped in indentured servitude. Yet look at those groups today. Historical discrimination is not an excuse for present day dysfunction.
Especially when billions of dollars have been poured into majority black communities since the 60s. In fact, one of the rationales for the War on Poverty was that it would serve as a form of reparations and restitution for downtrodden black Americans. Yet look at black communities today.
So at what point does personal responsibility come into play? Is it ‘the man’ telling black Americans to slaughter each other at rates that rival the genocide in Syria? Is it ‘the man’ telling them to have generations of poorly raised kids out of wedlock (even though they weren’t doing that in the 20s, 30s and 40s)? Or to glorify crime and undervalue education?
If the police crack down on crime in black communities, people scream ‘police -state’ and cry racist. If police pull out of those same communities, people question the neglect and cry racist. What is the solution?
P.S. read about Reverend George McMurray, Congressman Charlie Rangel & the Congressional Black Caucus begging Nixon to crack down on drug peddling in black communities (which lead to the War on Drugs). Those black citizens didn’t see the drug dealers who stacked bodies, fed poison to their loved ones & constituents, and made grandmas scared to leave their homes as ‘their people’. They just saw them as evil criminals.
How can you be vehemently against black rights and listen to rap?
You lukewarm cracker racists are worst than the actual Klansmen.
Blacks don’t have “a taste for criminality”, thats white peoples excuse for racism toward black people.
The economic cuts came before the crime in these areas. Much of the crime going on in these areas before hand were from white people against black people in the early history of these now mostly black areas.
Black people in these areas didn’t just come in committing crimes. There weren’t to many black gangs 50 years ago, there were not a bunch of armed black people having shootouts and selling drugs generations ago.
The poor work ethic theory is also a false one. That too comes for white people racist narrative about black people.
To make a comparison with the history of black people to the history of the Irish, Japanese and Jews is just delusional on multiple levels. Its the difference of a hundred times worse level of oppression in every area of society
People saying billions of dollars are spent in black communities? Clearly haven’t been to one. Show me where billions has been spent? You can’t. Stop hearing what somebody white has said about how many billions they spent in the hood without you going to see where that money went. When they make these claims of billions being spent in particular areas? Understand that cities are carved up into sections and clearly in poor neighborhoods you don’t see to many billions floating around.
As far as personal accountability goes? Nobody ever said people shouldn’t have that but my thing is the effects of white supremacy embedded within all levels of society isn’t factored in. Again, like I said its not rocket science to know what conditions lead to crime and that crime didn’t just pop up in a wave, it built over time with white america having full knowledge of what their oppression towards black people were creating.
You say when the police pull out of an area, people cry neglect? Thats never been the case because the police don’t pull out of black neighborhoods.
And picking out somebody begging Nixon to crack down on drug dealers don’t mean that person was speaking for all black people.
Again, when you go into a black neighborhood you see buildings that black people didn’t build to live in. Guns that black people didn’t manufacture to use. Drugs that black people didn’t chemically create generations ago, and a bunch of other institutions that do more to facilitate a pipeline to prison then to business success. Now to believe that black people created all these things to hurt themselves when clearly every time we look through history we see OVERWHELMING intentional oppression aimed at black people from white people in a clear effort to outcast them from almost any and everything, is simply choosing not to see whats clearly there.
Lupe’s next album is about the so called war on drugs…. DROGAS