The war against crack cocaine has led African Americans to support the incarceration of their own. Fear is the driving force in this paradigm. We often hear that the US has five to ten times the rate of incarceration of any European nation. We don't hear as much about the fact that it has been so totally unbalanced from a racial point of view. While the rate of imprisonment of whites is about two times that of other nations, it is more than ten times greater for blacks in most states.
Blacks get longer sentences than whites, on average, for the same crimes.
These numbers are new in the last several years, and it is strictly drug arrests that have created them. We, in effect, have gone into the poorest areas, taken help away, turned them into battlefields, and put a tempting basket of goodies in the middle of the street, seducing children who see no hope in their futures. The big bright basket of drug dealing offers youngsters the things they otherwise will not attain. Then we tell them they must not touch, and have imposed terrible penalties for doing so. It is as if we deliberately have set these traps to destroy them.