There are more black men under state custody or supervision in the United States today for acts that no sensible person regards as criminal (drugs) than were enslaved in 1850.
Many otherwise sensible people support 'drug crimes', and most of those who want to 'decriminalize' recreational drugs still support widespread criminally and civilly enforced restrictions.
I support no special drug regulations or crimes at all (i.e. nothing outside fraud liability), but I am in the tiny minority.
edit: to be clear, I would prefer to eliminate the whole prescription system and FDA regulatory apparatus. I am not just talking about marijuana.
Keep in mind also, even those people who support legalization (myself) do not necessarily believe that that means that existing laws should be ignored and unenforced. This creates a situation where police and politicians can choose, based on whatever subjective factors they want, who to prosecute. This leads to anarchy.
The modern prison-industrial complex is reshaping of slavery basically. It needs as input people it can control, force them to work for meager pay, extract maximum profits even from families trying to call them. Lobby for War on Drugs to stay in effect to keep the input to the funnel full.
Btw as surprising as it may be to people here, Hillary Clinton was a choice candidate for PIC. They gave her at least $250k in lobbying just last year. Lately she claimed she will refund it, but it was a token gesture so far and she donate about $10k to a women's prison charity. She was also a big proponent of the infamous "three strikes law" is which filled the prisons with various repeat offenders no matter how minor their crimes.
Didn't most stocks shoot up? Dow had hit a historic highest point lately also apparently.
So one hand we have proven active lobbying, proven "tough on crime" stance and strong support for "three strikes" law, on the other hand, stocks generally shoot up after election.
But even looking at stocks, GEO is up a bit higher than what it was last year. CXW is just back to where it was last year this time. Did you see other stocks there? Those are the two I know about.
US Steel for example went from 7-9 range to 30. Now that's a solid difference. Google was 650 now in 800s. Is Google also supporting Trump... who knows, fire up the presses (really doubt it).
> There are more black men under state custody or supervision in the United States today for acts that no sensible person regards as criminal (drugs) than were enslaved in 1850.
How does it look when you adjust for other factors, namely poverty?
Although to be fair it's probably a much lower proportion of black men now than it was in 1850. There are certainly still problems, but they aren't nearly as bad as they were just a few decades ago.
I don't know how you're reaching this conclusion from reading that we imprison more black men than ever and that the numbers are even higher than slavery numbers.
I feel you, but ultimately I think you're trying to make our still dystopian present easier to swallow, which is understandable.
I really like how 13th on Netflix repeated a simple but devastating stat: the US has 5% of the world's population, but it imprisons 25% of the world's prisoners, with 40% of them being black men.
With most of those black prisoners doing free labour while having their wealth, power, and freedom stripped due to their imprisonment, it really doesn't feel any different than it's ever been. It's just hidden from the public now.
> Although to be fair it's probably a much lower proportion of black men now than it was in 1850.
Probably not; slaves weren't legally treated as persons and weren't generally incarcerated for crimes as such, and while there was certainly racism against non-slave blacks, I've seen no account of massive disproportionate imprisonment.
Now, slavery itself was a bigger problem than the current disproportionate imprisonment, but also different in kind, not merely degree.
Sorry I wasn't being very clear, I meant that the proportion of blacks that were slaves was far higher than the proportion that are now imprisoned. Or even that are ever imprisoned. Really I think trying to paint our present situation as almost as bad as where we were just 150 years ago doesn't really make sense.
> I meant that the proportion of blacks that were slaves was far higher than the proportion that are now imprisoned.
My comment was about black men (ie, adult males) under correctional custody or supervision (ie, probation or parole). I think it's likely that the ratio is close to the 1850 number - by 1850 there were quite a lot of free black men.
But that's not really the issue - I'm more inclined to take issue with
> trying to paint our present situation as almost as bad as where we were just 150 years ago doesn't really make sense
I think the prison system is very, very bad. A horrifically ugly mark on our history. As bad as slavery, and as impactful on black families in many places. Life as a black family in a radically abolitionist state - say, Kansas - was almost surely less disrupted by slavery in 1850 than it is by the prison state today.
What's unfortunate now is how many people believe our incredibly segregated neighbourhood and work environments are the way they are either by choice or circumstance rather than by deliberate planning and design to oppress and mitigate political and economic power.
If no sensible person regards them as criminal, they would not be crimes.
Your assertion is that the sentencing/laws are racist. I would assert that crime, itself, is racist. For whatever reason some minorities commit more crimes. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that they do it BECAUSE they are a minority. I am not saying black people are inherently more criminal because they are black, merely that based on demographics a black person is more likely to be a criminal. I do not know why that is (nor do you) and do not make any attempt at explaining it.
Did I miss a memo?
There are more black men under state custody or supervision in the United States today for acts that no sensible person regards as criminal (drugs) than were enslaved in 1850.