That's a non-sequitur answer that also manages to concede the point of the comment upthread, which is that there has in fact been a retributive cast to drug policy for black people.

You make a good point.

That article doesn't support your point. The law being referenced here is the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, signed into law 8 years earlier by Reagan [1]. You are correct, though. The Black Congressional Congress and the majority of black congressmen at the time supported the ADAA, even helping draft it.

But, I still think that it would be wrong to assume that there was universal (or even majority) support among the black community. One confounder would be the media; studies have shown that public opinion about drug use and drug crime were/are directly related to media coverage [2]. With Reagan publicly saying drugs "are as much a threat to the United States as enemy planes and missiles", I think it's difficult to disentangle anyone's true personal feelings about the law from the sociopolitical influences that were present at the time.

The view of policing at the time was simply different. Some might have viewed the ADAA as a much more honest form of policing black communities, as opposed to the efforts undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s: stifling civil rights-related protests and other actions, along with actions by high-powered militarized SWAT teams being concentrated in poor black communities [3].

Even in retrospect, the issues are complex and unclear. Is it really difficult to believe that most people at the time, policymakers or not, were simply incapable of fathoming the results of the ADAA? It's clear that the imbalance in policing, partially as a result of the ADAA, has decimated the black community. Most of the damage, I would argue, is due to an ugly amalgamation of the rise of the prison industrial complex and the transparent willingness of policymakers to look past the needs of poor and minority communities in writing criminal law over the last 30 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Drug_Abuse_Act_of_1986 [2] https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/3/425/1671880/Set... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/02/ameri...

It's useful to remember the ADAA in the broader context of the 1980s push towards harsher federal sentencing across the board. It's not a coincidence that federal sentences were revised and federal parole abolished just a few years prior, or that the Willie Horton ad would run in the next Presidential election.

It's true that there was mainstream black support for anti-crime legislation, but that support wasn't distinctive. Blacks weren't leading the charge; they were just another part of it.

I see many of these discussions that focus on federal sentencing laws without considering that state laws and enforcement practices are far more important. State laws are varied and complicated - some states are far harsher than others. Yes the federal laws are and were unfair and stupid, but the large majority of prisoners and drug offenders are in state prisons.

John Pfaff has been on a lot of podcasts, he is the most insightful person on criminal justice that I have found. Surprisingly Vox has a good summary of his book.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/m...

Thanks for the link. I'm working on a post for my site about the recently deposed/pardoned Sheriff (Joseph Arpaio) and will probably quote something like this:

> Pfaff tries his hand at some of the messaging that will be needed here: He argues that incarceration is simply an ineffective way to combat crime, while it imposes all sorts of costs on individuals and society that likely outweigh its benefits.

Have you heard the theory that racism might be institutionalized?

I do not recollect with precision, but there is an article posted on HN few years ago, showing the 80s archives of New York Times, in it NYT was squarely arguing for harsher sentencing and so were African American civic leaders.

May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy. We will be failing ourselves if we cannot examine that fact and simply hitch and re-assign every "fucked up" decision to racism.

> May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy.

That's exactly the irony of institutional racism: it's so rarely _consciously_ racist. It is often "colorblind".

> May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy

I didn't. I thought it was racist back then. Many black leaders thought it was racist back then too

Now that's just crazy talk.

Have you studied the crack epidemic or have you simply slurped up some recent liberal political journalism?

> studied the crack epidemic

Your bias is showing. Crack arrest spree is more accurate. I was politically active while it was happening, so no, this isn't a recent observation.

Can I just add how incredibly rude "slurped up some recent liberal political journalism" is? You should be ashamed of the way you talk to strangers on the Internet.

> So what you're saying is that black people can't be trusted to have their own opinions because of institutional racism? Words fail

No, I'm saying that you cannot make an appeal to authority. It is a logical fallacy. Just because some blacks were in favor does not mean it was not racist

If this were a group of white politicians and community leaders seeking tougher sentences for crimes occurring in their neighborhoods, I'm pretty sure we'd be hearing a debate on the merits of the proposal.

But because black politicians and community leaders came to the conclusion that tougher sentences for crack dealers are warranted based on their experience it must be because of institutional racism. It's like they've come to a conclusion you don't agree with so you feel free to dismiss their agency. Help me out here, because it's the only way I can read this.

You keep repeating this argument. Its premise is invalid. It was not in fact black politicians that raised the sentences for crack cocaine in relation to powder cocaine; it was the overwhelmingly white US federal legislature.

That's... completely irrelevant. The harsher sentences had wide support from black leaders and politicians.

It's obviously not completely irrelevant, as your argument depends on a causal link between black support for crack sentencing laws and the adoption of those laws. In fact, no such causality is established, and it is indeed unlikely, given that the laws were passed by an overwhelmingly white legislature in the grip of a nationwide (largely unjustified) freakout about crime.

John Pfaff's "Locked In" is a great source for the background on this stuff (Pfaff would be the first to say that drug sentencing laws are not the reason for mass incarceration in the US, but that's not the question at issue in this thread).

And white politicions supported harsher sentences in the past as well. Do they speak for us today? Did they speak for everyone back then? Last I checked you only needed a simple majority to get elected.

> If this were a group of white politicians... we'd be hearing a debate on the merits of the proposal.

You can't know that.

When was the last time white community leaders and politicians proposed a policy to address a problem in their own neighborhood and were accused of institutional racism?

And thus that's the trap that has been set: if you don't follow the recommendations of black leaders, you're a racist. If you follow the recommendations of black leaders, you're a racist.

Even a poorly powered AI in 1983 figured out the only way to win is to not play the game.

That's not at all what they said.