The war on drugs was used to marginalize black Americans by limiting

[Baitball Blogger]

their voting numbers. And now, Trump's border crisis is being used in the same way to limit the number of brown skinned people who could potentially add numbers to the Democratic rolls once they become Americans.

It's right in our face. You would think we could use the Fourteenth Amendment to stop him, because we've been down this road before.

[wcast]

1. Criminalization was, and still is, used as de facto segregation.

It's amazing how we Americans can condemn horrific actions in other countries, like the holocaust, but casually gloss over our own treatment of groups that was equal to or worse. When we talk about slavery you hear I, or my family, didn't own slaves so get over it. This nation is not willing to discuss how we have internalized how we view AAs for 400 years and continue to place the blame on them.

Good post 👍

[Baitball Blogger]

2. How true that we can see it in other nations, but not in our own.

I still can't get over the one - two punch with the War on Drugs. The CIA was dumping drugs into our inner cities and the FBI and law enforcement were used to take the targeted group down. Scalia made it easier for them with the high crime area designation.

It was a tragic decision that backfired and put us all on this road to self-destruction.

[Lonestarblue]

9. It isn't that people can't see it, it's that they won't.

Nixon instituted the war on drugs in 1971 and began the drug raids that were all part of his Southern strategy. Forty-eight years later, after pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into this war, we see no change. Drug use in the US did not decline significantly as a result of this war but did remain stable until the past few years when the use of marijuana and opioid drugs increased. As we all know, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. So why are we still doing the same thing forty-eight years later?

The history of Prohibition teaches us that when something is made illegal, enterprising people will simply find ways around the law. Legalizing and taxing a drug like marijuana brings in revenue to use in fighting the use of other, more damaging drugs like cocaine. Plus, if marijuana is legalized, constraints can be put on growers to stop increasing the THC in products to provide a greater high.
Perhaps better long-term education about the use of drugs would help, but I doubt young people today would pay attention or care.

Republicans have painted the war on drugs as part of their so-called tough on crime stance, and the cost in dollars and the destruction of lives from incarceration for minor offenses are rarely explored in the media through a direct cause-effect analysis of the policy. Republicans are tough on crime when minorities are involved and less so for white people, especially white collar crime, which they see as justified by wealthy people just getting wealthier. Voters who refuse to read and find out for themselves what Republican policies are doing to the country will just continue to listen to right-wing propaganda and keep their heads buried deep in the sand.

[wcast]

11. Exactly right.

War on drugs, but only on my political enemies. When my enemies struggle, throw them in jail and make their sentences disproportionately higher, along with extreme policing techniques.
Portray them as perpetrators not victims.

When my group struggles, call it a health crisis and change the narrative. Portray them as victims instead of perpetrators.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. +1

[pangaia]

8. And then there were/are Native Americans.....

what a total disgrace...

[Baitball Blogger]

13. +1

[malaise]

3. It is ReTHUG policy

and has been for at least 40 years

[Wounded Bear]

4. It's one of those "unintended" consequences...

and with the boost to the Prison Industrial Complex's bottom line, it was a double dip. Racist capitalism at its finest.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. RW perspective is Democrats flooding the country with immigrants to hurt R politicians vote margins.

It's not true of course, and it is also an indictment of Trump-Republicon Party values: they don't even believe their own rhetoric that hard work (such as immigrants do) leads to success and conservatism.

[Texin]

6. That was but one result of the hardnose "crime" policies.

They then enacted laws at the state level (I'm thinking specifically of Florida) that did away permanently with a former felon's right to vote, along with stripping them of returning to any state-licensed professions they may have been working in or toward for the rest of their lives, such as barbers and hairstylists. This draconian approach kept black and brown-skinned people - male and female - from rising above poverty-level in perpetuity. On top of that, they began to whittle away at public school educations by enacting tax cuts for homeowners on a county by county basis to the detriment of minority children in metropolitan areas. If you live in the south or in densely populated cities like Chicago, Miami, etc. you've seen it and felt its effects for nearly three plus decades.

[IronLionZion]

7. They've completely repealed the 14th amendment

in their minds, and hoping to remove it in everyone's minds through deliberate gas lighting.

Being born in the USA or even immigrating legally and becoming a naturalized US citizen is meaningless unless white. White nationalism is promoting the false belief that the only real Americans are the white ones.

Of course they don't like the rampant diversification of large states like Florida or Texas because it would ruin their electoral chances if brown US citizens decided to vote for Democrats in large numbers.

More Democrats and DUers need to be aware of this deliberate white-washing and not fall for it. Documents exist. Use a person's birth certificate, passport, driver's license, etc. to determine their citizenship. We should never use skin color to guess a person's citizenship. The default American is NOT white and never has been. A racist could make that case for a white Europe, but it's just plain stupid to make the case for a white USA.

It hurts my heart when I see long-time liberal DUers assume I was born somewhere else because I'm brown.

[jalan48]

10. It has also served to benefit to the "for profit" prison industry.