This "Salon" title is kinda click-baity as this article goes into further detail on the same subject I delved into a few days ago. And the subject of my post was this:
As the article below says, violent crime in the hood due to crack was a major problem in the mid 1990s. What was happening black neighborhoods due to crack may or may not have been exaggerated by movies and music of the time period, though. A friend of mine said his entire Southern California graduating class, except for him and maybe two other guys, is dead due to crack dealing and using.
Income, class, and race come together in the hood and make crack a lot more deadly in black communities than it powder cocaine is in white communities. Same level of addictive-ness between powder and crack cocaine or not, the motives for using the drug are different for the start.
White people, mostly, use the cocaine to party and wind up getting hooked. Poor people party too, even poor black people. But poor people tend to use drugs to escape the pounding they are receiving inside this racist and capitalistic system. A video recording of a play about Billie Holiday brought that fact home to me again, just recently.
You also have people selling it and carving out territories because they are desperate because they can't get legitimate jobs. You add the fact that the police aren't policing but containing and you have some seriously violent crime and violence around crack cocaine in poor, black communities that you don't in white affluent communities (White meth and heroine addicts in poor white communities is a whole other subject)
And when you have seriously violent crime in black neighborhoods, you have some seriously angry law abiding citizens that want the criminals put under the jail --even when those citizens are black.
If race and racism, had not been a factor the Clintons would have recognized that a desperation born of 1) lack of opportunity and 2) police containment were creating the violence and that 13 year black kids are not inherently violent "super predators"
Super deadly? Yeah.
Kids that are violent seem to be lacking in caution, pull back, and maybe even empathy once they cross a certain line. Yet, if the violence of crack had been busting out the seams of a white neighborhood, the politicians would have soothed the panicked residents then found a way to get the white violent teenagers re-positioned in such a way that drug dealing wasn't seen as the only way to make a reasonable living.
Violent white teenagers would have been seen as "troubled." I have no doubt about this. They wouldn't have been sent to jail forever as a solution.
Bill and Hilary Clinton, in my opinion, are examples of white people acting out whiteness and assumed superiority. This just cannot surprise me anymore. But I do find myself dismayed that so few black people (the non-elite) seem to remember just how badly they wanted the crack dealers erased from existence.
But I'm not surprised by black lack of memory.
Many black people have also conveniently forgotten that they were in favor of Clarence Thomas becoming a Supreme Court Justice.
The other thing that does surprise me is that some black and brown people don't see Bernie Sanders as a variation on the same theme.
Bernie Sanders is being a white man or performing whiteness in a different way. And he is truly a white liberal in a way Hillary is not. Hillary is waaaay right of Bernie.
But Bernie isn't any less white. And he moved to the whitest state in the nation from BROOKLYN in 1968 as if to prove his whiteness.
His 1968 choice might be the most obvious reason he cannot speak to racial issues AT ALL unless he's making being black in this country synonymous with being destitute and lacking education. The black people he feels for are the ones he can pity. Parentalism, back again after all these years.
And should Bernie get to be president, he will be shocked that his programs for poor people haven't erased all or most of black people's social ills. He will be shocked that the black unemployment rate stays at 2.5 to 3 times that of white folks no matter what he does FISCALLY speaking.
He will be shocked that racism is real and can manifest itself in a myriad of ways.
Racism has to be addressed as if racism is real...because it is real. Nothing is going to budge white racism except the addressing of white racism by white people. Hillary might throw us a few bones and attempt some small controls here or there in regards to racism. But Bernie? He's the white liberal that knows everything already and the thing he probably knows best is the pureness of his own heart.
I swear I'd rather talk to a borderline racist than the white liberal who assumes himself/herself pure. I'm not EVEN exaggerating. The conversation is easier with the toe-over-the-line racist and even the white racist with a full 50% of their body over the line than it is to talk to the white liberal who assumes he's pure.
I can honestly say that I'm probably closer to Bernie on issues. But I feel like the gap between reality and what he's selling is huge. And the fact that Bernie seems genuine, that he seems unaware that he cannot promise anything but a promise of slow beginning of evolution, rather than a bloody and violent revolution, over the course of eight years max makes me wonder about his sanity more than just a little.
Read More:
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/16/racist_then_racist_now_the_real_story_of_bill_clintons_crime_bill/
Bill Clinton didn't go down the road of putting these draconian laws in place for drug dealers without a lot of black support.
Income, class, and race come together in the hood and make crack a lot more deadly in black communities than it powder cocaine is in white communities. Same level of addictive-ness between powder and crack cocaine or not, the motives for using the drug are different for the start.
White people, mostly, use the cocaine to party and wind up getting hooked. Poor people party too, even poor black people. But poor people tend to use drugs to escape the pounding they are receiving inside this racist and capitalistic system. A video recording of a play about Billie Holiday brought that fact home to me again, just recently.
You also have people selling it and carving out territories because they are desperate because they can't get legitimate jobs. You add the fact that the police aren't policing but containing and you have some seriously violent crime and violence around crack cocaine in poor, black communities that you don't in white affluent communities (White meth and heroine addicts in poor white communities is a whole other subject)
And when you have seriously violent crime in black neighborhoods, you have some seriously angry law abiding citizens that want the criminals put under the jail --even when those citizens are black.
But Bill Clinton should have known better.
Black elites did know better but were overruled from what I can tell.
But black citizens suffering the drive bys? They didn't care. They wanted the shooting to stop.
However, Bill Clinton and and his wife Hillary should have known what the panicked citizens of some of these black neighborhoods did not -- if they'd cared even a little bit about "children" who get sucked into crime, even the seriously violent children.
If race and racism, had not been a factor the Clintons would have recognized that a desperation born of 1) lack of opportunity and 2) police containment were creating the violence and that 13 year black kids are not inherently violent "super predators"
Super deadly? Yeah.
Kids that are violent seem to be lacking in caution, pull back, and maybe even empathy once they cross a certain line. Yet, if the violence of crack had been busting out the seams of a white neighborhood, the politicians would have soothed the panicked residents then found a way to get the white violent teenagers re-positioned in such a way that drug dealing wasn't seen as the only way to make a reasonable living.
Violent white teenagers would have been seen as "troubled." I have no doubt about this. They wouldn't have been sent to jail forever as a solution.
Bill and Hilary Clinton, in my opinion, are examples of white people acting out whiteness and assumed superiority. This just cannot surprise me anymore. But I do find myself dismayed that so few black people (the non-elite) seem to remember just how badly they wanted the crack dealers erased from existence.
But I'm not surprised by black lack of memory.
Many black people have also conveniently forgotten that they were in favor of Clarence Thomas becoming a Supreme Court Justice.
The other thing that does surprise me is that some black and brown people don't see Bernie Sanders as a variation on the same theme.
Bernie Sanders is being a white man or performing whiteness in a different way. And he is truly a white liberal in a way Hillary is not. Hillary is waaaay right of Bernie.
But Bernie isn't any less white. And he moved to the whitest state in the nation from BROOKLYN in 1968 as if to prove his whiteness.
His 1968 choice might be the most obvious reason he cannot speak to racial issues AT ALL unless he's making being black in this country synonymous with being destitute and lacking education. The black people he feels for are the ones he can pity. Parentalism, back again after all these years.
And should Bernie get to be president, he will be shocked that his programs for poor people haven't erased all or most of black people's social ills. He will be shocked that the black unemployment rate stays at 2.5 to 3 times that of white folks no matter what he does FISCALLY speaking.
He will be shocked that racism is real and can manifest itself in a myriad of ways.
Racism has to be addressed as if racism is real...because it is real. Nothing is going to budge white racism except the addressing of white racism by white people. Hillary might throw us a few bones and attempt some small controls here or there in regards to racism. But Bernie? He's the white liberal that knows everything already and the thing he probably knows best is the pureness of his own heart.
I swear I'd rather talk to a borderline racist than the white liberal who assumes himself/herself pure. I'm not EVEN exaggerating. The conversation is easier with the toe-over-the-line racist and even the white racist with a full 50% of their body over the line than it is to talk to the white liberal who assumes he's pure.
I can honestly say that I'm probably closer to Bernie on issues. But I feel like the gap between reality and what he's selling is huge. And the fact that Bernie seems genuine, that he seems unaware that he cannot promise anything but a promise of slow beginning of evolution, rather than a bloody and violent revolution, over the course of eight years max makes me wonder about his sanity more than just a little.
Read More:
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/16/racist_then_racist_now_the_real_story_of_bill_clintons_crime_bill/
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