Section 1: Identification and evaluation of sources The question of this investigation is: “To what extent did Nixon’s june 1971 speech, where declared a “Drugs are public enemy #1” for the first time, set the grounds for future anti-black political standpoints and mass incarceration of black and brown people?” The war on drugs was created by the conservatives in the 70s, to have a justifiable reason to persecute black and brown communities with political power. The original “War on Drugs” was the one started by president Richard Nixon in 1971, where he became the first political figure to use the term, and also declared narcotics “Public enemy #1”. With modern knowledge of the Nixon administration it is important to look at his word choice …show more content…
The south, the most conservative of the states was still weary to give black people a place in society. The Nixon administration purposely pandered to the concerns of the white working class who made up the majority of the vote; recognized as “the republican Majority”. Kevin phillips stated “Nixon’s successful political campaign could point the way toward long term, political, and ethical realignment of the new Republican majority” Nixon established an era of Republicans that continued to primarily campaign on the basis of racial issues, by using coded language and racial insecurities as opposed to traditional arguments politicians based their presidency on. Essentially making racism a political viewpoint. The liberal branches of government knew this and attempted to thwart Nixon. In 1973 a recommendation was issued by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals “No new institutions for adults should be built, and institutions for youth should be closed” , this statement represented the voice of liberal America, who was pro-integration and against the race based campaigning instituted by Nixon. This viewpoint was against the historical conservative agenda but had no space to prevent the massive influx of new inmates over the next 20 years. The following elections were determined based on attitude towards race, as opposed …show more content…
In modern day, 1 in 3 black men have felonies on their record. Meaning they can't vote, they are virtually unhireable, and were absent from their family lives. In 1970’s anti narcotic spending was around 1 billion per year, in the 80’s it spiked to above 8 billion per year, and to this day, the U.S has spent over 1 trillion on this so called “War on Drugs” that has done nothing to lower rates of drug use, or even rehabilitate drug users. It only functioned as a justification to put black and latinx people behind bars, despite the fact that all races of people use drugs at the same rate .Punishment, became less of a reflection of what safety entails, and a means of social control. It all began with the establishment of racism, and classism as a political viewpoints by the actions of the Nixon administration; Through the war on
While the War on Drugs may have been portrayed as a colorblind movement, Nixon’s presidency and reasoning for its implementation solidifies that it was not. Nixon coined the term “War on Drugs” in his 1971 anti-drug campaign speech, starting the beginning of an era. He voiced, “If there is one area where the word ‘war’ is appropriate, it is in the fights against crime” (DuVernay, 13th). This terminology solidified to the public that drug abusers were an enemy, and if the greatest publicized abusers were black, then black people were then enemy. This “war” started by Nixon claimed it would rid the nation of dealers, but in fact, 4/5 of arrests were for possession only (Alexander, 60). Nixon employed many tactics in order to advance the progress
Many policies put into action by the Nixon administration aimed to imprison African Americans and other minorities by catching them on minor charges and putting them to work. This was done with the primary motive of undermining the black community. Even Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the war on drugs was created as a way to compromise the blacks and hippies. He stated “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities". This proves that the government was purposely implementing these laws in order to specifically bring down these minorities. When Bill Clinton took over the presidency, he continued this trend by putting a new plan into place which he called “three-strikes-you’re-out”. This legislation served to send increasingly large numbers of African Americans to prison, and keep them there. It made it so that if someone was convicted of a serious crime three times, they would most likely have to serve a life
In reality, the war had little to do with drug crime and a lot to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a strategy used by the government. The President identified drug abuse as a national threat. Therefore, they called for a national anti-drug policy, the policy began pushing for the involvement of the police force and military in drug prohibition efforts. The government did believe that blacks or minorities were a cause of the drug problem.
The phrase, “war on drugs” was first used by Former President Nixon. The polices created tried to control the supply and demand of drugs but “the war on drugs” turned into a war on minority communities, especially African Americas. At this time, cocaine was introduced to the scene, but was mainly used by Caucasians. The police did not pay much mind to it until this very same drug started to show up in African American communities. (Welch 2007) “Urban black Americans have borne the brunt of the War on Drugs. They have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned at increasing rates since the early 1980s, and grossly out of proportion to their numbers in the general population or among drug users. (Welch 2007) The war on drugs helped create the stereotype that African Americans are the top users and distributors of drugs which is untrue. This made police single out minorities, especially African Americans when it came searches, arrests, and convictions. As stated earlier, police raid Dee’s project and arrested her and several other people. This was a pre-determined raid that in the eyes of many, was unlawful and unjust. Many people that were locked up with Dee and/or prior to Dee arriving at the prison, were there on drug charges. This is not the first time when drug raids have plagued the African American community. Police target these populations quite often. African Americans
The War on Drugs is believed to help with many problems in today’s society such as realizing the rise of crime rates and the uprooting of violent offenders and drug kingpin. Michelle Alexander explains that the War on Drugs is a new way to control society much like how Jim Crow did after the Civil War. There are many misconceptions about the War on Drugs; commonly people believe that it’s helping society with getting rid of those who are dangerous to the general public. The War on Drugs is similar to Jim Crow by hiding the real intention behind Mass Incarceration of people of color. The War on Drugs is used to take away rights of those who get incarcerated. When they plead guilty, they will lose their right to vote and have to check application
In an attempt to reinforce his dominance over the political spectrum, Nixon capitalized upon the fear which surrounded a legitimate public health issue by twisting it into an opportunity to stifle and alienate his political opponents. Nixon recognized that the American desire for government action regarding substance use essentially granted him the power to enact any reform which he pleased, seeing as due to the severity of the issue, the public would openly embrace any change to the status quo. Although Nixon initially increased allocated funding for drug-control agencies, he lacked any political force to truly implement stricter measures against drug use. Thus, demand for a federal means of enforcement spurred the creation of the Drug Enforcement
The war on drugs began with the presidential term of President Nixon in the 1970s. According to drugpolicy.org, “He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs.”
Though President Nixon launched “The War on Drugs” in 1971, the most aggressive antidrug policies, including harsh mandatory prison sentences for possession of even small amounts of narcotics, were enacted during the Reagan administration. Thirty years later, 20 million Americans (roughly 1 in 15) use illegal drugs regularly. We seem to be losing the war. Some, including Columbia University neuroscientist Carl Hart, think we were fighting the wrong war to begin with.
The War on Drugs, as previously stated, was first introduced by Nixon and reinforced by its preceding presidents. It is a campaign that was launched in 1971, by President Richard Nixon during his time in office, but was not enacted into full force until the 80s when Ronald Reagan was in office. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding went from eight million to 95 million dollars. During the same time, funding for treatment and prevention was reduced (Florio 2016). As a result, convictions for drug offenses, after the announcement of the War on Drugs, are the single most important cause of the explosion of incarceration rates in the United States (Alexander 2012:60). That is to say that if the War on Drugs was not introduced and reinforced following Nixon, the United State’s prison system could have avoided mass incarceration, exceptionally for people of color. To illustrate, nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs (Alexander 2012:60). Sadly, it is more than obvious that it appears that the War on Drugs was a certain phenomenon that was distinctly formulated to target individuals of color. Although the War on Drugs was in reality created to diminish the drugs and punish those that were located with them, it did absolutely the opposite. Few would guess that the
It is clear that Richard Nixon was elected as a conservative. He promised themes of “law and order” (Lecture 24, November 14), pandered to what he called the “silent majority” (Silent Majority Speech, 1969) and promised to end the unpopular Vietnam War, a product of liberal policies and ideals. He offered a sharp contrast in rhetoric between the soaring “we can do it all” language perpetuated by Kennedy and Johnson (Lecture 25, November 19). But how truly conservative was “Tricky Dick’s” presidency? Did the man who was elected specifically to end the seemingly endless chaos of the sixties actually prolong the national nightmare?
In 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He substantially increased the presence and size of federal drug agencies, and passed legislation like mandatory sentencing laws and unconstitutional warrants. Nixon even listed marijuana as a Schedule One drug, the most constrictive drug category. Over forty years later, the U.S is still waging a war on drugs, spending billions of dollars per year and creating major social issues.
From 1970 to the end of the decade, Americans role became more defamatory. In 1970, 60% of drug overdoses were suicides, while 31% were accidental. Drug use rose considerably in the 1970s. In 1970, there were 350,000 arrests for drug abuse. People were taking drugs because they were less moral. They were becoming less moral because they weren’t religious. People started to abandon their religion. To people of religion, the public that was taking drugs took them because they were immoral. Also from 1970 to 1979, the total reported crime rate went up by 51%, while the population only went up by 8%. Another big issue was abortions. From 1970 to 1979, the legal abortion rate rose 535%. During In 1979, there were 1,497,670 legal abortions in the United States Women began to have more abortions, mostly due to the facts that they weren’t married to their partner, the pregnancy was result of rape, the woman didn’t have enough money, or because of religion. Many religious people were against this, and they believed that these women were slaughtering babies by having abortions. One of the most well-known crimes occured in the White House, with President Richard Nixon’s scandal. Richard Nixon was the 37th president who served from January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994. Nixon was involved in a scandal that fell on June 17, 1972 that involved a break in at the Watergate
Nixon has conveyed to the nation through a speech, that illegal drugs are “the country number one public enemy”, and urged congress to help fund for the war (youtube.com). It was an announcement that appeared suddenly, and for many Americans, drugs were not a major concerned that this country faced. Throughout his presidential campaign, Nixon has made ‘law and order’ his central theme, assuring to the American people that crime would serve no place under his administration. He had devoted seventeen speeches solely to the topic of law and order, and one of his television ads explicitly called on voters to reject the lawlessness of civil rights activists and embrace order in the United-States (Alexander, 48). But as Alexander has demonstrated in her book, crime is always used in a race-neutral language by many local or state politicians, to advance their own political agenda. However, whether one is paying attention or is totally naïve, crime is always associated with race, even when race is not mentioned. And because whites deep fear of being potentially victimized by blacks were well alive, offering them protection against crime was as offering them protection for their badge of white
In the early 1980s, policymakers and law enforcement officials stepped up efforts to combat the trafficking and use of illicit drugs. This was the popular “war on drugs,” hailed by conservatives and liberals alike as a means to restore order and hope to communities and families plagued by anti-social or self-destructive pathologies. By reducing illicit drug use, many claimed, the drug war would significantly reduce the rate of serious nondrug crimes - robbery, assault, rape, homicide and the like. Has the drug war succeeded in doing so?
There is a great disparity in the incarnation rates of African Americans in the United States. The war on drugs created a legal way to target African Americans and strip them of the rights they were afforded after slavery ended. It provided the ability to give harsh sentences for non-violent offences. Drugs were flooded into the already severely impoverished communities that were already vulnerable to addiction due to their environment and trauma. Then stop and frisk allowed police officers to target these neighborhood and arrest community member for possession of illegal substances and brand them criminals, dehumanizing and isolating them in cages/jails (). This further makes them susceptible to substance misuse. Furthermore, once released