Race and the Drug War
Posted on April 6th, 2009
by John Schwenkler |
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Last Friday, Jonah Goldberg wrote a post at The Corner arguing that there is something “unlibertarian” about opponents of drug prohibition who use claims about the drug war’s disproportionate effects on blacks in an attempt to demonstrate its injustice. This post prompted a lengthy response from Reason’s Jacob Sullum, who helpfully showed up Goldberg’s claim that blacks are disproportionately affected by the drug war simply because they are “disproportionately in this line of work” for the falsehood that it is, concluding that especially in conjunction with the troublingly racist history of drug prohibition in the U.S., the disproportionate harm that the drug war inflicts on black Americans does indeed suggest an injustice that goes beyond that which libertarians would recognize in the war on drugs even if its effects had an equitable racial distribution.
Meanwhile, here’s how Goldberg responded to a reader who made some points similar to Sullum’s:
Let’s take drugs out of it. I’m in favor of the death penalty. Let’s assume blacks and white commit murder at identical rates but because blacks are poorer they get convicted and executed more than whites. I don’t think that fact alone means we should get rid of the death penalty. It means we should do a better job of executing white murderers. A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.
It’s really hard to follow the logic here. In the first place, the hypothetical crackdown that Goldberg proposes here is appropriate only if the laws in question deserve to be enforced; this is uncontroversial enough in the case of murder, but given that this very issue constitutes a huge part of what’s at stake in discussions of drug prohibition, it seems an unreasonable move to make. Moreover, doesn’t it seem that Goldberg has pretty much given up the game at this point? “Poor people are disproportionately affected by all sorts of things all the time”, he wrote earlier in this post, “and blacks are disproportionately poor. In most other spheres, libertarians don’t take that fact and bend their principles to it.” But that’s exactly what Goldberg is proposing to do in this hypothetical example! We’ve got the murder laws that we do, and they’ve got the effects that they have; whether those effects make life a bit more difficult for certain “identity politics groups” is supposed to be entirely beside the point, isn’t it? Or do Republicans only buy into identity-politicking when it can be used as an excuse for harsher sentencing penalties and enforcement of existing laws?
The more basic point, though, is this. What differentiates the case of the drug war from that of, say, the racially disproportionate effects of market capitalism or loan policies based on credit-worthiness is that drug policy is an aspect of our state-sponsored criminal justice system, and as such its societal function is essentially that of, well, doing justice, whereas private banks and the free market have only economic ends in mind. And so it’s simply astonishing to see Goldberg claiming that a government policy that leads blacks to be incarcerated at several times the rate of whites is somehow less troubling in its racial implications than affirmative-action policies that “keep Asians or Jews out of elite colleges”; neither situation is ideal, to be sure, but locking up a poor black man who couldn’t afford legal representation for selling dope on the corner is, shall we say, a bit more morally problematic than telling a Jewish kid from Scarsdale that he’ll have to go to Williams instead of Harvard. It is indeed the case that so far all this amounts to is an argument for serious and widespread drug policy reform, and not outright decriminalization; there’s nothing at all unlibertarian, however, about suggesting that one reason we might want to go one or the other of these routes is that an already disadvantaged racial group that still bears the scars of a long history of genuinely appalling treatment in this country might stand to benefit from it.
Well, that or you could just shut your mind to the facts and write, as one of Goldberg’s readers actually does, that the only evidence we need for the belief that drug dealers are disproportionately black is the disproportionate blackness of the “victims of drug dealing-related murders”. Because it’s certainly not as if there could be another explanation for that.
(Cross-posted at Upturned Earth.)
Filed under: Law, libertarianism, liberties
John, I’ve enjoyed reading your past articles, but I don’t get your point on this one. It sounds like you’ve spent too much time in Berkeley, as I read your comments about the poor oppressed black man. I have no sympathy for anybody standing out on a corner selling drugs. There are all kinds of opportunities for minorities who want to get ahead. Drugs are a blight on our society causing a great deal of social breakdown and dysfunction, and I don’t understand why they seem to get defended so much on this blog. If these lowlifes weren’t selling drugs they’d be getting into some other kind of trouble.
So Goldberg’s ’solution’ to the problem of illiberal drug-laws and brutal sentencing being disproportionately applied to the blackest - and poorest (so easier to get convictions) - urban minority is to say that everyone should be treated the same?
Just ignore the illiberality, condone the brutality, and brush right past the fact that ‘not treating everyone the same’ is a feature of the War on Drugs, not a bug in its programming, and move straight on to “Clap Harder”?
Yeah, sounds like the Doughty Pantload to me.
There is no issue here from plain justice. If a citizen etc is found guilty of a crime then they pay the penalty. Its just the same crowd that resents the demographics of lawbreakers.
Its all about non assimulation of immigrant peoples into American identity and self esteem. IF they became true Americans they would achieve like everyone else. They would not live or breed just with their own people.
Crime is just a manifestation of segregated identities refusal to live the AMERICAN WAY by American means in deep motivations.
The question of drug legalization brings with it the question of culture and whether our laws should reflect our norms and aspirations.
The drug debate in the 60’s focused a lot on the moral social question of the effect of narcotics on the moral fiber of society. The consensus among the majority was that narcotized people were behaving immorally by failing to maintain sober and engaged mentalities. In short it was the Protestant Work Ethic vs a foreign ethic of inebriation and self centered withdrawal from work and social engagement. Underlying this was the idea that people under the influence were more likely to engage in crimes and irresponsible behavior.
This language is absent now in the legalization debate. We have simply given up on segments of our society. We no longer hope to integrate black people, particularly black males into the world of work and civic engagement. This was also the thinking behind the welfare reform measures of the 1990’s. We focus on black female participation in the workforce and give up on black males. So now we are re-thinking drug enforcement in order to reduce incarceration rates.
I’m somewhat agnostic regarding legalization but I do think we need to think through what society will look like if this is done. With large numbers of people at the lower end of the social pyramid legally narcotized, we will have to adjust our thinking around a great many social policies.
Once one officially recognizes that a whole swath of society will be unable to function, but legally so, you invite follow-on effects. For instance, narcotic drug drugs are addictive. It follows that persons taking these drugs will become dependent on them and will then become dependent on the taxpayers. It is hard for me to envision a regime where these dependent persons, a large number of whom will be black men, will not become truly second class citizens. Can they hold drivers licenses? Can they engage in many forms of employment?
If drugs become legal, does one therefore have a right to them? We have a long history of dealing with alcohol but how will be deal with the heroin addict who claims his addiction is stable and asserts a right to employment as a pilot? Why not a seat on the supreme court, or a commission in the army? Surely in our rights obsessed culture drug takers will seek to expand the boundaries of their freedoms to take drugs and to interact with the rest of us. Detecting alcohol inebriation is easy and under given circumstances, chargeable under law. But these is no breath test for cocaine or heroin.
My point is that our debate about hard drugs and marijuana have always had a racial-cultural component, pitting our Protestant European expectation of virtue and reticence against a tropical culture of inebriation and license. Don’t expect to legalize drugs and retain any vestige of the Western Culture we once were. Legalizing drugs only further normalizes non-western traits in an already declining society.
It sounds to me like Jonah is saying that the enforecement and punishment are indeed corrupt and is calling for the racial profiling of white people so that we can then apply the same corrupt enforcement and punishment to them. So if you’re system is broken you don’t fix it. You make it bigger!
Crud, wrong “your” in my comment. I switched thoughts halfway through writing that sentence.
T.O. Meehan,
Excellent analysis. I rarely hear proponets of drug legalization talk about what the consequences of said legalization might entail. Most people recognize that the drug war has been a failure, but legalization may bring with it unforseen consequences. I’m glad to see you raise these questions in your comment.
I’m not sure that we might not legalize in the long run. Personally I think legalization is a form of washing our hands of the underclass. Perhaps this is justified but it doesn’t mean that the effects of their presence ceases.
Personally I take the radical approach of suggesting that persons who want to legally take drugs should be licensed. That license should be a two way street. Free or very cheap drugs in exchange for giving up their franchise. They certainly should not procreate. Perhaps other disabilities should apply. This sounds extreme but to be Frank the addict is a parasite not a true citizen.
There are other alternatives besides complete legalization and a world wide imperial drug war. The latter, which involves dragging citizens of other countries to the US for violating US drug laws and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in the course of eradication programs, has made the US enemies throughout Latin America and contributes to growing hostility in Afghanistan. The damage has been less domestically, but powerfully contributes to the damning statistic that the US incarcerates more of its population than any other country in the world.
Get this whole matter out of the hands of the national government and devolve it at minimum to the states, better still to local communities. Then we would be able to see the results of a variety of approaches and would not have to speculate. And different approaches might make sense for different areas. But above all, stop making a war out of it. War has become the code word for every big destructive government program and appropriately so. The problem is that a large part, maybe a majority of the population have come to love war - any war.
The problem with the war on drugs is that it has become a war on the American public. The source of the problem is largely but not exlusively in the underclass. But post 60’s, we can no longer focus enforcement efforts. So we submit to a regime in which all citizens are suspects at all times. This is also true for the War on Terror as well. In an open society we are all equally open to the heavy hand of the law.
A separate drug policy for each municipality would be anarchy on the roads. Suburban towns bordering cities would collect fortunes on drug busts.
The fact that we incarcerate large numbers of people is not in itself a problem. Frankly, no one has a method of curbing recidivism. The only way to decrease crime levels is multi-year sentencing for criminal habitual drug users. When they are locked up, they cannot either commit crimes or impregnate women to perpetuate the drugs/crime cycle. This is harsh but I believe it to be true.
Perhaps what we need to focus on is a more humane and constructive prison system. The current one is toxic and wasteful. I suggest something like penal colonies in remote regions. They could be semi-self-supporting. Setting the inmates to work on road and other infrastructure projects would at least give something back to the community.