“Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” (2012) is a PBS television documentary based on the 2008 book of the same name by Douglas A. Blackmon, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The book won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
After the American civil war (1861-1865) the slaves were freed. Northerners tried to make the South right during Radical Reconstruction (1866-1874). But in the 1870s they lost interest and the South sank into nearly a hundred years of white-only rule known as Jim Crow: the Klan, lynchings, separate and unequal – and slavery by another name:
There were four forms of forced black labour from 1874 to 1942:
- convict leasing – where companies, like US Steel, hire prison labour from state and county governments. As demand for labour increased, like just before a cotton harvest, so did arrests. Crimes that once carried a fine now carried a prison term. Black life was criminalized. Being unemployed, for example, became the crime of “vagrancy”. Blacks accounted for a third of the South but nearly 90% of its prisoners. Most blacks were arrested on vague or trumped-up charges. The stereotype about blacks and crime comes from this period.
- peonage – where you are forced to work for a particular employer till a debt is paid off. Landowners did not have to prove that someone owed them a debt, so sometimes they just made stuff up to get workers.
- chain gangs – prisoners chained together doing work for state and county governments, like road repair. They were a common sight in the South, reaching their height from 1905 to 1935.
- sharecropping – where you work on another’s land getting a share of the crops raised. If you left the land, the police could arrest you and bring you back.
Convict leasing was the worst: at some Alabama prison camps the death rate was 30% to 40% a year: prisoners had no way to protest or leave bad working conditions while employers, unlike slave owners, had no interest in their long-term health: if a prisoner died, they could always get another one the next day at no added cost. It also made it easy to prevent or break labour strikes, keeping wages low even for whites. For black men it meant they could be pulled off the street never to be seen again by their family as they were worked to death in a coal mine.
To white Northerners peonage was the most shocking: while they did not care much for blacks, peonage was beyond the pale – to them it was slavery in all but name. President Theodore Roosevelt tried to end it, but soon lost interest. His distant cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt, did end it at last in 1942 – the year, Blackmon says, that slavery formally came to an end in the United States.
The documentary makes no comment on the mass incarceration of black men in our own time.
See also:
- slaverybyanothername.com – The website for the documentary and the book. Watch the documentary free. It is also on YouTube (84 minutes).
- Jim Crow
- slave patrols
- mass incarceration of black men
- Spielberg’s Lincoln
- American abolitionists
- Selma
thanks Aba…being an African I am beginning to understand how great modern civilisations are made. I think of the mighty British empire, German expansionism, USA and Japanese imperialism + what you have just said so clearly above and it makes sense. But I wonder, in the 21st Century how can we find another way to Greatness? Or is it just a wet dream?
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I see you’re a man of your word, abagond. You followed through, when you said you’d create an article about the documentary i posted, “slavery by another name” Now we can discuss this…
Yes, they didn’t mention the mass incarceration of black men in jail, today.
The first thing i thought of, while watching the documentary was how it was a mirror image of today’s prison, system. -_-
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Typo above ^ @ : o O ) >
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The drug wars, in the USA , are just a continuation of the legacy of slavery spilling over into today,white people do more drugs than minorities, but minorities get targeted at a higher leval
but, in Brazil, its worse than you could imagine
http://www.mongabay.com/external/slavery_in_brazil.htm
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Actually, I was really taken aback by how many White people seem to use drugs. When I was in high school, about half of my Black friends smoked weed. But about 80% of my White friends/acquaintances smoked weed and or did cocaine. As I graduated and got out into the workplace, I found myself initially in mostly White environments and was after the only guy in my group who didn’t use drugs.
White people seemed to think that drug laws were “silly” and frivolous. Many White friends had inadvertently found their parent’s “stash” (usually weed) and so didn’t seem to see it as much of a problem. It was like coffee—you didn’t give it to kids, but hey, there wasn’t anything truly wrong with it. But as teenagers, they still didn’t want their parents to know that they were using.
Also, I noticed that the image of the White drug dealer was different in culture. Even in the movies, White drug dealers looked more like this.
http://www.crushable.com/2009/04/22/entertainment/chace-crawford-scruffy-on-twelve-movie-set/
They had a dangerous side, but more in a romantic slightly bad boy kind of way, but they were more like cool guys with connections who could get things done ad had money. They often seemed to be depicted as being smart, leader types. They might turn to violence as a last resort, but they were really businessmen who were interested in making money.
However, in the Black community everyone that I knew seemed to know that drugs were bad. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t always stop people from taking them, but for most people, drugs were necessarily associated with secondary crime, with violence, with people being taken to jail, with junkies sleeping in the park, and etc. The ugly side of drugs was always pretty obvious.
I also always noticed that Black drug dealers were portrayed differently in the media too. They were always very violent, very emotional, and very flashy. They gave orders but could never quite resist doing some of the violent drug soldier work themselves.
It seems clear to me that Black drug use and White drug use are seen completely differently in the eyes of society. And the law treats them differently as well.
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“Yes, they didn’t mention the mass incarceration of black men in jail, today.”
How is that remotely equivalent? Black men could stop committing crimes. End of story.
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The amount of people busted for simple marijuana use, a drug that is recognised as much more benign than alcohol, and, in various states is recognised as having medical value for users, is ridiculous.
and you can beleive the majority of those busted and doing jail time are minorities.
the war on drugs is really a war on minorities , while the huge profits are going into the kingpin’s hands and the payoffs to many authorities to look the other way
this whole drug thing I keep talking about in South America and in Mexico too, the USA hypocracy about it, the dictators who also are involved with it, the whole upper echolon of underhanded pay offs to polititions and militaries and police authorities (which is not to say that all polititions and authorities are involved), while the poor , mostly black and brown users or dealers, on the low leval of the totem pole, get the brunt of law enforcement crackdown, is ahuge hypocracy in this world
They are a huge part of the population sent to the prison industrial complex in the USA
An interesting thing, when my state I live in in Brazil , was going through a month of bus bombings directed from organised crime leaders in jail,tied to big crime gangs in Sao Paulo, when they started busting the perpatrators of the bus bombings, they were mostly white…there are plenty of black people where I live who are in favelas and participate in this drug traficing, a documentary by MV Bill gave a great history of poor black youth involved in favela drug traficing, in Brazil and my town had black members represented, but, the big time dealers, and the people they send to do the dirty work, are mostly white…this doesnt mean that there arent black big time drug dealers in jail directing hits, Fernando Beiramar is one from Rio, but it does speak to the fact that at the higher levals, there are all kinds of people involved,but at the lower leval of who will take the fall, its mostly going to be minorities
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the results of this imbalance in a country like Brazil, which is similar to the USA in this dynamic of black people and the legacy of slavery and prison, are prison conditions that are more like the middle passage…
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CgmPOfd-J0)
the images are pretty shocking
to be sure, there are some brutal thugs in there, but, what about just mild drug busts or petty crime, and sticking young men into concditions like this? Even brutal criminals shouldnt be subjected to those conditions
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@ Dr. G.
I don’t think that anyone is saying that it’s the EXACT same thing. But just think if the police began a policy of only ticketing White people for speeding or traffic infractions? Then they made all of the penalties much more severe and expensive.
Now, it could be argued, in such a circumstance, that it’s really no problem. All White people would have to do is never break a traffic law. End of story.
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It is interesting that they do mostly drug busts in minority neighborhoods instead of white.There are high end drug dealers whose customers are the rich and famous.This war on drugs is more like a war on certain people based on where they live and their income.This is like the cops going after the thieves who steal a hundred dollars and wears jeans and sneakers,while the theif that steals millions and wears a suit and tie gets away with it.
The media puts an image of a bad guy out there and cover stories that show that image as being true,but hardly cover the ones of the bad guy as being what everyone least suspects.Its like with kids we tell them stranger danger but most of the crimes commited against them are from family memebers and ppl they know.We need to be aware of everyone not just the image of the villian the media puts before us.Anybody can be a drug user,heck i’ve seen shows with housewives who live in mansions being addicts and just get rehab instead of jail.While the mother who has barely any money gets thrown in jail for having a fraction of what the other person has.Money talks,just see how many cases of people getting off because of it when we all knew dam well they were guilty.This is classism and racism at its finest.
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@ dr g
yes black men could stop commiting crime,but so could everyone else.Say a kid steals a car and goes joy riding and the police release them to their parents. Another kid steals a car and goes joy riding ,but the police put them in jail. Shouldn’t their punishments be the same? What is that teaching the kid who gets no punishment? Isn’t that sending the message that you are untouchable and your parents will bail you out. Yes there will always be crime and people should pay for what they’ve done.The problem is why do certain people get less punishment for the same crime.If it’s equal then it should be equal punishment and prosperity,but its not.equal crime, equal time.
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@ mstoogood4yall
http://amradaronline.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wenn1895597.jpg?w=236&h=236&crop=1
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A Difference between white community’s drug use and the black community’s drug use is overwhelming amounts of violence that drug use fuels in the black community.
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@ Solesearch
Another way of putting that might be to say that the overwhelming amount of violence that the drug trade cannot help but foment, has been relegated to occur in the poorer, less politically connected, minority communities. There, it will be much less likely to draw strong a reaction from those in power.
Or to make it even more plain: The drug violence that could be occurring in Beverly Hills or Malibu is contained into Compton and Lynwood because it’s better for business if the mess happens there.
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@ Solesearch
I’d say the drug dealing brings about more violence than the using but that’s just my opinion. Especially in areas where the law is not there to serve and protect impoverished people who can see decadence across the way but not touch it.
And even then, violence gets prefixed with “black” when its in our communities, white people don’t have to deal with that at all. They are not the marginalized so there isn’t really “white violence” propaganda, the white meth heads aren’t really held up as something wrong with white people.
———
@ Legion
Dr.G is a troll, one that’s been around under a slightly different screen name if my suspicions are correct. I can’t see how anyone with a functioning brain could read that article and say that but then I’m sure there was some self serving ahole in 1876 who sounded just like him.
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^ I truly believe this bears more looking into.
I think the impression that White Americans get is that Black drug dealers are just more ignorant and more violent than the White friend of a friend who they buy their weed from. They see themselves as simply participating in a civilized way of getting around archaic and silly laws that make perfectly harmless substances illegal.
Few White people turn on the T.V. and realize that a good portion of the gang activity, that begins in Mexico or Columbia, and makes it’s way through the ghettos, has anything to do with their own voracious drug habits.
It’s terrible how those Mexican gangs are out of control down there!
It’s terrible about these Black hoodlums and their high murder rates!
But the White divorce lawyers and Senior VPs who are snorting cocaine off the counters in their sailboats and ski lodges have nothing to do with “those animals!”
It’s this kind of thinking that justifies the current incarceration policies. I have no problem with taking drug dealers off the street—just take them ALL without exception for neighborhood or skin color.
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King,
Relegated by who? Contained how?
I don’t think white drug users/sellers are limiting their activities to black neighborhoods.
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Relegated by the cartels and to some degree by political action and the designation of resources.
Certain areas have been demonstrated to be clearly off limits for drug violence. Other areas are less so. There is a certain level of crime that will be tolerated in certain areas and unsolved crimes are left on the books. That is where the drug wars are most often fought.
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here we go…
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It’s not that White drug users/sellers limit their activities to certain neighborhoods. It’s that the drug organizations do not conduct their violence in certain neighborhoods. there are two realities.
1) Most of the money to pay for drugs comes from the White suburbs not the poor minority ghettos. But if the suburbs were plagued with the kind of drug violence that happens in the ghetto drug enforcement agencies would show us a whole new definition of the term “crackdown.”
2) Ghettos may not have most of the money, but what they can supply are desperate young men who are willing to take huge risks. They are also convenient in the sense that law enforcement is more lax there, especially when its minority on minority crime. So it ends up being a good place to fight their wars between young minority men. As long as they’re only shooting up the ghetto (for the most part) it’s not nearly as high a priority to stop the violence.
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mstoogood4yall,
yes black men could stop commiting crime,but so could everyone else.Say a kid steals a car and goes joy riding and the police release them to their parents. Another kid steals a car and goes joy riding ,but the police put them in jail. Shouldn’t their punishments be the same? What is that teaching the kid who gets no punishment? Isn’t that sending the message that you are untouchable and your parents will bail you out. Yes there will always be crime and people should pay for what they’ve done.The problem is why do certain people get less punishment for the same crime.If it’s equal then it should be equal punishment and prosperity,but its not.equal crime, equal time.
Exactly. It’s like saying the crime is only bad depending on the color of the skin. Henceforth, we have these self-righteous nutjobs complaining over and over about black people and crimes as if we’re the only ones who commit crime in this whole damn nation.
I’ve watch the documentary a few months back, and I immediately connected the dots between then and now. Today is just a continuation of yesterday. The belief that the past doesn’t have an effect on today is just denial blabbering.
King,
As long as they’re only shooting up the ghetto (for the most part) it’s not nearly as high a priority to stop the violence.
But let a young minority male commit crime, particularly violent crime, in a white neighborhood, and White America goes bonkers with fear. White supremacists and race realists will pass it around like a blunt to prove that blacks are after the blood of whites. And (mostly) white politicians, lawmakers and media bosses will eat it up and use it to justify more police action, stricter laws, more prisons and harsher sentences to those from those neighborhoods.
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King, hadn’t thought about it like that. Sounds pretty true.
However, it seems like most of the violence in black communities comes from gangs fighting over territory and old slights.
So if whites are selling drugs in white communities why don’t they have the same territorial disputes.
I don’t see how territorial disputes in white communities between white drug dealers can be fought/settled by black people in black neighborhoods.
My answer is that drugs aren’t being pushed in white neighborhoods using the methods that are used in black neighborhoods. Meaning they aren’t using territorial gangs to push drugs. You alluded to it yourself when you mentioned “the white friend of a friend”.
That’s all speculation though. For all I know, there could be plenty of white gang bangers. Perhaps, they just aren’t labeled as such. But, either way, I guess the method of distribution would still be controlled by the cartels.
Gen, that is all very true.
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@ Solesearch
Well, the most dangerous and most violent parts of the drug trade deal with importing large quantities of illegal substances into the country. On this level you’re dealing with FBI and DEA level operatives who are no joke. You are also dealing with the more serious task forces from local law enforcement.
But you also have a lot of big money drug deals with a lot of money and product changing hands. These are the “pinch points.” Both law enforcement and rival criminal organizations will try and strike at these points and that is where the violence often happens on one level. This doesn’t happen in rich neighborhoods (mostly) but in places where there is less law enforcement and where the criminal activity can be hidden among a lot of other crime.
On another level because “soldiers” are needed for this dangerous part of the operation, there are also constant personal beefs between the gangs. It just comes with the territory, if you want to use armed young men with not much to lose, its not going to be constrained just to business shootings. So you get a lot of peripheral shootings going on as a result.
But by time the drugs get to the suburbs, they’ve been pretty widely distributed among mostly smaller “drug businessmen” who are selling to people who mostly have money to support their habit. In that environment much less violence occurs because there is not as much product concentrated in one place, and the money is being collected slowly from individual buys, not for large supply blocks.
Where desperate minorities are not available they do use White gangs (especially motorcycle gangs) and there is quite a bit of violence among them as well. But the BIG centers are the urban cities and the poor and desperate there are mostly minorities.
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King, thanks for the breakdown. Good stuff, man.
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Solesearch, let me also just clarify that I don’t mean that the reason for the drug business itself is racist. I’m sure that the cartels are racist, but I don’t think that their actions are motivated so much by a hatred of Blacks and Latinos as it is by a love of large profits. I don’t think that the drug lords are saying, “Where shall we do our most violent and dangerous work? I Know! Let’s stick it to the Negros!”
I think it’s more a case of them attacking at the weakest link. Because of racism, we have ghettos and barrios, and because of racism they are not a high concern to those in power. The cartels are just doing what makes sense. They are breaking into the castle by going through the stepchild’s window. They know that nobody cares much about what happens to the stepchild, so it just happens to be the easiest point of access.
It is the racism IN AMERICA that creates these weak points for the cartels to exploit.
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[…] "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" (2012) is a PBS television documentary based on the 2008 book of the same name by Douglas A. Blac… […]
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Its good to remember, that, a high amount of middle class black neighborhoods dont have this violence, its really a small percentage of people, of a super poor community , who are shooting at each other, over territory…its a fact that minorities are less paid for their work than whites, in a very poor community, that means some males are easily led to pursue drug dealing as the only way for upward mobility, where most of the people dont get involved in it…
and, the fight for territory , seems to play out in minority communities, because maybe that is their upward mobility ticket and they are ready to fight for it…gang violence was in poor minority community barrios , not just because of the drug trade and they have been defending their turfs for generations..with gangs fusing to make huge super gangs..blackstone rangers, bloods, crips, etc
and, its a fact in New York for example in the late eighties, that in the cocaine trade, it was the Columbian violence with photos of a family shot up on the highway and a baby dead on the street , and stuff like that , that shocked people about the drug violence ,and brought a new outrage at it
and, the Ialian Mafia, Hells Angeles and the meth aphetimine people are examples of the white drug violence, I dont know the percentage breakdowns, but,those are formadable violent drug gangs also , I am as leery of as any minority gang
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The Russions are a pretty violent bunch who have made some new presence on the New York scene since I left
I remember while living in New York that Id hear about Mafia assasinations , with violent pictures in the paper like one boss hit and the picture of him dead in the paper with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, another with a hit right in mid town near a restaurant
the Irish in Hells Kitchen were pretty notoriously violent
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@ King now I love your breakdown of drug violence. I would just say let us inspect the history of drugs in minority communities. Which we can track down to the late Italian mafia before the government big crack down. I have to get sometimes to back this thesis with some solid evidence I really hope I do. Yet, when we look at the fall of the black mafia in New York in the early 50’s and 60’s and the pattern of drugs in the community you might see a correlation between them. Argh! Ran out of time.
I still think that the latin cartel only took over from the weakness in the Italian mafia in those areas. Plus the lax police enforcement of drugs in minority neighborhoods.
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@ K.O.T.
How far back do you want to go?
Are you are familiar with the Opium Wars in China?
The British Empire took opium (which the Chinese had used only as a medicine) and mixed it with tobacco and turned it into a street drug. Soon, opiumt was selling all across China like hotcakes. Imports rose from 200 chests, in 1729 to importing 70,000 chests by 1858. The British were becoming rich and China was filled with drug addicts. The Chinese past law after law banning the importation of British opium, but the were all ignored. Finally the Daoguang Emperor demanded action and sent Lin Zexu, a high court official to stop the trade. They began destroying the opium. In response the British attacked China. To make a long story short, the British won the opium wars and continued to force opium on China.
Alchoholism was almost unknown to the Indian tribes of North America. But White traders, explorers, and later, soldiers introduced Native Americans to “Fire Water.” This was done quite purposefully and without warning to the Native Peoples of the addictive nature and long-term effects. To this day alcoholism remains a MAJOR problem among Native Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_alcoholism
The story of Whites initially dealing drugs to non-Whites, then painting the non-Whites as the derelicts and degenerates goes on and on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US
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Outright torture of Africans happening right now in the Sinai. No one cares because they are black. Africans’ pleas fall on deaf ears.
Imprisoned, Tortured, Killed: Human Trafficking Thrives on Sinai Peninsula – SPIEGEL ONLINE
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/human-trafficking-thrives-on-sinai-peninsula-a-891585.html
The Sinai Peninsula has become a prison and grave for thousands of African refugees. They are kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured to death even after their families have paid hefty ransoms. But Egypt refuses to act.
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Ha! Perfect quote, Legion!
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@ Legion
Just a gut feeling really. I only know one so far who doesn’t seem to see the comic relief in using a moniker that signifies having higher education and consistently making inflammatory comments devoid of basic logic. Even the first letter of the surname is the same.
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Folks, most of the suppliers of these drugs do-not reside in the ghetto but in the rich parts of town. They are almost never caught. These dealers in the ghetto are for the most part dispensable and make good bullet fodder for the cops or opposing dealers. It’s like a low paying job, the turn over is great. The law enforcement practices what can be colloquially referred to as ‘casting a wide net’. They love doing this in areas where there is a lot of black folks. For example; if they stop a hundred people, ten may have outstanding warrants or may actually have illegal substances or weaponry of some sort on them. They don’t stop people in predominately white areas unless they look suspicious(black, mentally ill or racialized). For every white drug dealer they apprehend, 99 get away. Hence it would appear to the ignoramus that it is mostly blacks who are committing these crimes. Flip the script and it would appear that it is mostly whites committing crimes, they aren’t policed or stopped as much, so they go undetected, unless they reside in a trailer park of course.
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Slavery by it’s original name
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2299038/Jean-Claude-Toviave-Former-tennis-pro-trafficked-children-Togo-U-S-forced-work-slaves-Michigan-home.html
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@ Claude
I don’t think the intent of the post was to cherry pick modern incidents of individuals enslaving others by deception, coercion, and breaking the law.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/man-charged-keeping-s-m-sex-slave-apt-freed-accuser-won-testify-article-1.125799
I think it is more about systemic slavery and how it was conducted on a society wide bases in the United States long after traditional slavery had ended. This defeats the oft repeated admonition “Get over it! Slavery was over 100 years ago!” because in actual practice, it wasn’t.
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I think Claude is just another troll who, like all the others, wants to point the finger at black people because he/she hates the idea of black people talking about slavery at the hands of whites.
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In any case it seems that whites don’t want to talk about their past and present racism and crimes without bringing up any “examples” of crimes by black people, especially against whites. All it shows that talking about the sins of whites is a cardinal sin to these folks, a sure sign of a sociopath.
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@ Brothawolf
An Easter Troll at that!
@ Legion
Well consider what’s going on right now. True slavery is no longer possible on a large scale, in the U.S. But there still seems to be this societal “need” for very cheap hard labor. I would argue that today’s “slaves” are the illegal immigrant work force. Of course, they are not chattel slaves, but usually end up in some form of indentured servitude.
Now ask yourself, in all of these years, is it really so hard for the U.S. to devise a LEGAL immigrant worker program? Just think about it. Is that such a difficult thing—to simply work out a way for non-citizens to come to the U.S. to work, and if they choose, to apply to become full-fledged citizens? I think your common sense will tell you that this could have been done decades ago.
BUT there is obviously an advantage to having people in the country who are desperate, who have little recourse with the law, who can be paid under the table, who are dependent on their employers, and can be paid less than minimum wage. Because these kind of people will always do hard jobs for cheap. And the Democrats and Republicans are BOTH complicit in making sure this system continues (regardless of the rhetoric that makes it sound otherwise).
But then again, much of our slave labor today comes from offshore outsourcing too. The U.S. benefits from the near slavery conditions in other countries who are working on U.S. products. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect everyone in the world to get paid U.S. wages, but it’s clear that in some cases what is being done is obviously exploitative and immoral. Peoples lives are being sacrificed.
It seems that America will always need it’s slaves.
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People like Claude and Mr. G are sick. I don’t see why many Caucasians want to defend their racist and horrible treatment of Blacks in the past. Is it because of guilt or because they don’t have any remorse?
@All
As a young person, I wonder why many Whites come on here and try to degrade us Blacks and people of color? People like Claude and Mr. G make me throw up! Really, they do.
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@King
”And the Democrats and Republicans are BOTH complicit in making sure this system continues (regardless of the rhetoric that makes it sound otherwise).”
Well said, King. I definitely co sign with you on this one.
@Legion
I haven’t been on here for a while but when I came back and read your posts, you made excellent points!
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@ King
I am familiar with the Opium Trade. I would love to dive deeper into the history of substance and it usage for control.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/cointelpro/
I will do some more research but I am looking for modern examples. I wonder because the Italian mafia is often credited for not allowing drugs into their neighborhood.
Yet given examples where they took over Harlem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_St._Clair I wonder if the black mofia would have given the same shelter as the other mobs?
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Oh, I didn’t see Herneith’s post until now.
I just wanted to agree. In fact, ultimately most of the suppliers don’t even live in the United States. There just needs to be places in the city for drug delivery and block distribution. That may happen in the warehouse districts or else somewhere in the ghettos or barrios or even poor White areas. Gangs are often used because you need soldiers who will kill people without batting an eyelash. But they also need dispensable personnel. The cartels are not going to lose people higher up in the organization on routine drug deliveries. That would be inefficient.
They also are not going to risk the higher ups by stacking loads of cocaine in their garages so that when a bust happens the organization loses a key asset. It’s easier to to have other people who can take the fall for that kind of thing.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/06/01/early-morning-drug-bust-nets-15-on-long-island/
(Again, not that they’re always Black, but in the large cities poor minorities are often the useful stooges for dangerous and violent work)
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. @ Herneith and King…. Excellent statements.
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Wasn’t another aspect of Peonage that the farms/plantations farther out in the woods, pretty much just have the workers sign a paper and sent them back out to work without telling them slavery was actually over?
Also wasn’t the last person freed from Peonage in 1969?
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Inspired by the picture of the black man in the 30’s on the ground tied to a post behind his knees.
American Seed.
(An Easter Poem)
Our ancestor’s
broken bodies,
are as seeds planted,
in rich black American soil,
yearning,
to bring forth
a new crop,
worthy of their
precious drops of
(drip)
-blood
-sweat
-tears
-that
-are
-as
-water
-to
-us
-all.
Are they worthy of laud and lamentation?
Are they precious in our sight?
Though their skin be black
And sometimes their features and manners rude
and having seen dark days.
Yet…..
are their skeletons not white as snow?
-Mark Dukes.
Abagond I read your blog all the time. Keep up the good work. You make me a better person through your blog. I am duly reinformed of so much. And introduced like this article to new information.
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@ Mark Dukes Powerful imagery.
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@ Mark Dukes, that was beautiful..simply poignant, moving, and absolutely beautiful…”Hat tip”, to you Sir…
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Hope I get some time but here is an interesting read.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime09.htm
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I don’t know if you remember this but I do remember watching it on tv in the 90’s.
I’ve got to get going the baby has awoken. I will try to look more into this I always wondered about the rapid spread of drugs. Which I mean rapid I barely knew anyone in college that wasn’t taking something and my college was mainly white.
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oops sorry just meant to put the link not the whole video. argh.
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@ K.O.T.
And since Iran/Contra there have been a lot of substantiated accusations about U.S. ties to the Afghan Opium trade. It was clearly tolerated (and sometimes even assisted) during the Afghan Soviet conflict as a way to fund the Mujahideen. U.S. troops were guarding opium fields when they first rolled into Afghanistan. High Afghani government officials who are known to be drug lords are in the pay of the CIA.
It seems clear that the CIA (and some other US governmental policymaking entities) are at least willing to tolerate and protect the drug trade to further national geopolitical goals.
http://www.naturalnews.com/034289_Afghanistan_opium_trade.html
They realize that these drugs will devastate inner city neighborhoods in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, but they consider this to be the lesser of two evils. The important thing is that their policy goals are reached and the ends justify the means.
It seems certain that some members of the U.S government have abetted drug trafficking worldwide and in the United States. But as usual, only the patsies at the end of the chain were imprisoned. I’m glad that they were, but many more who knew more have never been prosecuted.
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Let me just add a clarification here to my above comment. (still in moderation)
I know that the most simplistic narrative of CIA/Crack Cocaine involvement assumes that the CIA specifically hates Black people and cooked up this scheme as a way to further screw us. That is most likely not what happened.
The CIA has been, from the beginning, part of an elite social hierarchy that exists within the U.S. government (although the order really goes beyond just the government). If you care to look into who founded the CIA and who were carefully chosen to be the first recruits you will get a better sense of what I’m talking about. But the CIA is a rather pragmatic organization. Their actions worldwide tend to demonstrate they are not interested in stoping drug use around the world. I don’t think that they believe that such a thing is even possible, and they are probably right.
The CIA seems to think more in terms of “Haves, and Have-Nots.” They are essentially Elitists who work to protect the worthy—the intelligent, the powerful, the well-born, the wealthy. The rest of us are either convenient, or inconvenient depending, and all are expendable for the greater good.
The CIA drug trade hurt lots of people of many different racial backgrounds but it hurt Blacks in the inner city the most because that would naturally be where the drug culture has always been the most out of control, and where there are more resources devoted to incarceration and less resources devoted to mitigation and recovery. But Whites too were effected by these narcotic imports. It’s just that the well-heeled can do drugs and go on to become the President of the United States—the non elites end up with a prison record and have a hard time getting good janitorial jobs..
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@King
It’s primarily a racial issue. The fact is that the U.S. courts continue to treat crack, which is disproportionately used by blacks differently than purer cocaine, which is disporportionately used by whites in America.
Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act 2 yrs ago, calling the old law “racially unfair,” and the courts still give blacks longer sentences today!
Even when we examine the treatment of other drugs, Black youths, for example, are much less likely to use drugs than white youths, yet they are 10x more likely to be convicted (!), and receive longer and tougher sentences than their white counterparts.
So, it’s not just a “Haves, and Have-Nots” issue, it is clearly racial or else the disparity in the court system wouldn’t be so pronounced.
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Well, King of Trouble, what a convex mirror image of what is happening down where I live, and, if we are going to incriminate the CIA and the American government, we certainly need to also incriminate Hugo Chavez, and the Farc, for what they were doing to Brazil…it really is the same thing..except Hugo and Farc were on a larger scale
It involves the same dynamic, and , black and brown people are at the bottom of the hiarcy and suffer the brunt of incarceration and violent deaths, with their communities held hostage.
And, this ties right in with the legacy of slavery, South American style
and, it speaks to that higher leval world wide involvement of elites of power, who use drugs as money making machines and roll over what ever rules and laws that exist to plunder this ilegal recource, and have absulutly no reguard for the lives they are rolling over
They deal , sometimes, with the same middlemen , it generates enormous revenue, and, it is accompanied by violence
Crack is a really wicked drug, not benign like marijuana, which should be legal, but, I wish there could be a way to make it a social problem and not a legal problem…the ravages of crack on the people it affects are shown quite often on jornal reports down here, and, it is not pretty…it really destoys lives…but, if it is black and brown lives being destroyed, it just doesnt get the same attention
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I didn’t think you meant that. The reverse is true, though. Racism is motivated by a love of large profits.
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@ resw77
I think now that the previous statement that I was referring to has come out of moderation it may better inform you of my viewpoint.
But I agree with you that the system is built on racist assumptions, but there is a difference between the reasons why individual drug laws are written in a lopsided manner and what is motivating the CIA. The CIA does not write the drug enforcement codes.
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@King
“The CIA does not write the drug enforcement codes.”
Fully agree. But if the CIA was not motivated by race, and it was only about raising money for the contra cause, then why didn’t crack get distributed in the same manner to poor white communities or even middle class white communities, since statistics show whites are more likely to use drugs?
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@ resw77
Well, of course, I’m not an expert on the subject. But from what I’ve been able to read about the CiA and crack, the CIA did not invent crack. At the time of the crack cocaine epidemic, cocaine was flowing into the U.S. primarily through Miami from the Bahamas and Dominican Republic.
Crack cocaine’s first appearance in the U.S. (California) was way back in 1974, the same year that the Meneses drug family (in Nicaragua) began doing business with Colombian cartels. But crack wasn’t being sold broadly in Los Angeles until about 1982-1983. The high point of the epidemic lasted from 1984 until 1991-1992. But the crack form of cocaine was a street product invented by the drug cartels, the Contras just began using the existing crack epidemic as a way to raise money fast for arms, and the CIA was helping them to do it.
So therefore the CIA was not in charge of selecting which communities crack would be sold in. They were not involved in choosing the skin color of the people who were to use the crack, They just helped get the crack to the places where it was already being sold. The cartels had already targeted Los Angeles, and of course (as always) it was the poorest parts of Los Angeles that were the easiest to traffic in. So that’s how you got South Central LA as the crack capital of the world.
Now why was South Central LA so vulnerable to the epidemic in the first place? OK that’s when you could very clearly point to many racist points of causation. But I don’t think that it has ever been as direct as a bunch of guys over at the CIA gleefully rubbing their hands together with over the prospect of Blacks getting hooked on crack. There’s a lot more constructive evil to be done in the world that they must attend to.
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[…] "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" (2012) is a PBS television documentary based on the 2008 book of the same name by Douglas A. Blac… […]
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“But I don’t think that it has ever been as direct as a bunch of guys over at the CIA gleefully rubbing their hands together with over the prospect of Blacks getting hooked on crack.”
***********
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb#Aftermath_and_death
{the *sanitized* version of an investigative reporter’s suicided demise}
But King, how do you know that contelpro or some other alphabet federal agency wasn’t secretly aiding the drug cartel toward steering crack to black communities?
The US has a very long history of conducting SECRET organized violence, mistreatment and oppression against black people via medical experiments, bio-research, vaccines, psych-ops, black ops, false flags, population/birth control, free/cheap labor, mind control, etc…
One need not read about a COVER-UP to realize that many/most things are kept secret – or hidden – or ridicule one as a member of the tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist club.
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But King, how do you know that contelpro or some other alphabet federal agency wasn’t secretly aiding the drug cartel toward steering crack to black communities?
SHOULD READ:
But King, how do you know that contelpro or some other alphabet federal agency wasn’t secretly aiding the CIA and the drug cartel toward steering crack to black communities?
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@ Matari
I guess there isn’t any way to prove a negative, but I just don’t think it works that way. Back in the days of Contelpro, the FBI was worried about the Civil Rights movement morphing into other things—particularly Communism (which they most feared during the Cold War). It was a prejudiced notion, and a racist program, but that was the fear that was behind it.
Exactly what would powerful political movement would they be afraid of in the Black community today???
I’m not saying that what your saying is absolutely impossible, but I think there are clearly a lot of other things that the elites are after in the world today. Dumping on “Darkie” seems like it would just be a distraction compared to all the other things going on.
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“Exactly what would powerful political movement would they be afraid of in the Black community today???”
*********
Okay King… but you should know that whiteness is not always about thwarting political movements. It’s often about enormous finances and control – as in the present day school to prison pipeline which primarily affects “darkie” becoming cheap labor fodder – or the fuel that runs the nationwide billion dollar prison INDUSTRIAL engine.. Some call it the New Jim Crow.
They simply LOVE KILLING two birds with one stone!
King, it’s almost as if you’re ascribing *logic* or reasonableness to whiteness.
Are you?
___________________
“I’m not saying that what your saying is absolutely impossible, but I think there are clearly a lot of other things that the elites are after in the world today.”
*********
Not a lot. Just basically two things. Money and Hegemony!
Notice that this combination historically/traditionally always involves some sort of mistreatment, violence, exploitation and/or oppression of (so-called) “darkies” by any and all means ….
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@ Matari
Well, I think what I was saying was that the motivation was primarily financial. Racism was involved, but financial power was the key factor.
Well, let me ask you this, are most prisoners today even doing any labor? (Not in California) And if so, how much money are they generating by their labor? For example in California, it costs about $47,102 a year to incarcerate a prisoner.
http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3
So, how much money beyond that cost are they earning the State by doing cheap labor? According to the 2012 U.S. Census the Median Household income is $50,233.00 (combined income of everyone in the household combined) So if a husband and wife are gainfully employed, together they slightly more money than it takes to incarcerate a single prisoner in the state of California. Therefore, a prisoner would have to earn like… $60,000 a year to make incarceration a net money maker—which is more money than many people with college degrees earn.
I’m not saying that money is not SPENT on prisoners and that this doesn’t help prison guard unions, construction companies, and administration and support services. That is a case of taking tax dollars and spending them. But as an Industry, it would be hard for me to see how in 2012 prison labor is GENERATING much new money for anyone.
I’ll reply further when I can.
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@King
“the CIA did not invent crack”
That’s news to me!! JK…But, seriously, I don’t think nor ever claimed the CIA invented anything. And I’m not disputing where or when crack first appeared. My point is the CIA facilitated the widespread distribution of crack in black communities at a disproportionate rate to white communities.
“So therefore the CIA was not in charge of selecting which communities crack would be sold in.”
That’s your opinion. Meneses claims to have been working with Ollie North. Ricky Ross claims CIA was one of his sources, and DEA agent Celerino Castillo said the CIA planes were doing the storing and smuggling.
“They just helped get the crack to the places where it was already being sold.”
It wasn’t “already being sold” on a large scale anywhere before the CIA’s involvement.
“So that’s how you got South Central LA as the crack capital of the world”
Many neighborhoods across America were ravaged by the crack epidemic…It was not just a South Central LA thing. The common denominator is that they are mainly non-white communities.
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That much is agreed upon. we’re now just parsing the “why.”
Again… facts already in evidence. We know that the CIA helped transport drugs to the U.S. We know that they were involved in the delivery. But then you’re assuming that the CIA either hijacked the existing, or created their own massive distribution network. None of the evidence bears that out. The CIA helped move drugs to the U.S. and dumped it into the drug channels that already existed here. They did not then instantly become the bosses of the drug distribution system and start telling everyone where to sell the drugs. That defies all reason. They were trying to raise money for their Cold War strategy of backing regimes that opposed communism and toppling regimes that supported it (see Monroe Doctrine).
Now, clearly they knew that this would have a very bad effect on the Black inner-city community. It was a case of members of the U.S. Government choosing the operations in Nicaragua over the safety and well being of their own citizens. And I think that the reason was that they were poor and Black, and this made it easy for them to get away with it. Understand that it’s not that I don’t understand the racism involved. I’m just saying that inner city Blacks were sacrificed for a specific CIA goal. They were not themselves the goal of this particular operation.
That is, of course an opinion. Anyone can choose to believe that this was a scheme deliberately targeted at Blacks based only on KKK style hatred. But in particular this case, I just happen to think that there is more going on than that.
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I agree with your breakdown, King
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Very interesting and disturbing. Sad reality I didn’t know much about since I didn’t grow up in this country.
The word ‘men’ is used only once in the article. Still better than not at all as it happens all the time:
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@King
“The CIA helped move drugs to the U.S. and dumped it into the drug channels that already existed here. They did not then instantly become the bosses of the drug distribution system and start telling everyone where to sell the drugs. ”
“Drug channels” exist throughout America, BTW, not just in the inner cities. So if your assumption were correct, which it is not, then the same crack would’ve been available throughout America and not specifically in the non-white communities of certain major cities.
No, CIA didn’t just “dump” drugs everywhere, it distributed coke to certain black dealers in Los Angeles, namely Ricky Ross, who admitted that Danilo Blandon and the CIA were direct (and cheap) sources, and who in turn distributed it in the form of crack to certain dealers elsewhere in the US. Yes, I equally blame Ricky Ross, but it would not have occurred without CIA’s full complicity.
Again, if it were ONLY about making money for the contra cause, then why not sell cocaine everywhere as opposed to certain dealers? Why just target black dealers in LA?
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“Freeway” Rick Ross was indeed one place where the supply was channeled but that was because by that time several members of the Meneses drug family had been forced out of Nicaragua and had relocated to California. That is the reason why it began as a West Coast phenomenon but eventually crack did spread around the country and became available to anyone who wanted it (Including plenty of White people).
In fact, i think you may find some interesting facts about crack use and ethnicity in retrospect.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/16066359509005229?journalCode=art
“African-Americans is 2-3 times that of White-Americans. However, a recent study that used interview data from the 1988 National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (NHSDA) found no racial/ethnic differences, once neighborhood was held constant.”
Also ALL the cocaine that was brought into California by the Contra Connection was not “cooked” into crack rocks. Some of it remained in powder form, and thus was distributed to White Americans through their normal channels as well.
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@ King
“but eventually crack did spread around the country and became available to anyone who wanted it (Including plenty of White people).”
I already acknowledged that it spread across the country, but no it was not widely available everywhere in the 80s, including in some major cities like Chicago. What was scantly available was not from the major source (the LA Crips and dealers like Ricky Ross) that led to the “epidemic” in many black communities.
“In fact, i think you may find some interesting facts about crack use and ethnicity in retrospect.”
Lifetime crack use is not the same as having crack widely available in your neighborhood. Apples and oranges. The crack epidemic did not hit white communities on the scale it hit black communities in the 80s.
“Also ALL the cocaine that was brought into California by the Contra Connection was not “cooked” into crack rocks.”
I never claimed it was. I specifically said “the CIA…distributed COKE to certain black dealers in Los Angeles, namely Ricky Ross…who in turn distributed it in the form of crack to certain dealers elsewhere in the US.”
“The difference is that he’s in prison and no one from the CIA was ever prosecuted for their role”
He was in prison; he was the fall guy.
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King
” But as an Industry, it would be hard for me to see how in 2012 prison labor is GENERATING much new money for anyone.”
***********
It is hard to see, King, because it is *designed* for the common/everyday person to be hard to see.
It is about cheap labor, and MORE. The more being prison communities popping up across rural America’s landscape, bolstering weakened rural and largely WHITE economies by creating prison based economies AND what’s known as prison based gerrymandering.
Prisoners (often/usually black and brown ones) with no ties to the communities they’re incarcerated in are in fact counted as residents. There’s a hook (gain/advantage) in doing this that translates into added:
political votes, (although the prisoners themselves cannot vote),
larger districts,
more political representation, which in turn translates to more money.allocated to these communities.
Please do not underestimate the cunning/slickness/refinement of racism/white supremacy.
http://www.naacpldf.org/case/prison-based-gerrymandering
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@ resw77
I’m not disputing that crack was an epidemic that hit the Black community the hardest. All I’m saying is that the Black community was a victim of opportunity to a government program looking to raise money by whatever means necessary. The CIA was helping to prop up a revolution in Central America that was running out of money, but that had access to cocaine product. The CIA made a choice that winning the proxy war in Nicaragua was more important than it’s own citizens – particularly African Americans.
They facilitated the sale of product from Contra connected drug suppliers to dealers in California. Some of it was powder cocaine (which ended up in a lot of places) and some of it was crack cocaine which began an epidemic in the Black community (particularly in Los Angeles) before branching out to some degree to other communities.
Why the Black community in SSLA? Because South Central LA was a first stop distribution point into the rest of the country, much as Miami had been. Also because SSLA was largely gang-controlled in the 1980s and largely anti-police. Why did it catch on in SSLA before going anywhere else? Because crack was cheap, and poor people could afford it. It was more potent than marijuana, and cheaper than most pills. It was easier to use than heroine or morphine. South Central LA had a relatively large concentration of poor Black people, so it was easy for it to became an epidemic.
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@King
“All I’m saying is that the Black community was a victim of opportunity to a government program looking to raise money by whatever means necessary”
And all I’m saying is that if your assumption were true, then the distribution of CRACK would’ve been more widespread.
“Because crack was cheap, and poor people could afford it….South Central LA had a relatively large concentration of poor Black people”
Again, I’ll ask, then why wasn’t it widely available in poor white communities in the 80s??
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I’ve already given you the explanations for that.
1) California (LA) was a main gateway and first stop for Central American drugs coming into the U.S. at that time.
2) Members of the Meneses drug family had been forced out of Nicaragua and had relocated to California (LA and San Francisco) where they were doing business.
The epidemic simply started in the logical place, given those facts. Poor White people in Mississippi or the Appalachians or the outer banks of the Everglades were just not in the logical place for it to happen at that point.
Everything starts somewhere. Later on it branched out into other areas.
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@King
No you haven’t. “Central American drugs” (I presume you mean cocaine) were distributed not just from LA, but from Miami, New Orleans, etc. I’m talking specifically about crack that was targeted specifically at black communities in certain cities.
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“a main gateway” does not mean there were no other gateways.
But this one was the most logical port of entry for the Meneses family at the time.
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[…] Slavery by Another Name (abagond.wordpress.com) […]
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[…] "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" (2012) is a PBS television documentary based on the 2008 book of the same name by Douglas A. Blac… […]
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“Within our Gates” is a silent film made in 1920 made by black film-maker, Oscar Devereaux Micheaux.
The film charts “…the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the “New Negro”…
The plot features a black woman who goes North in an effort to raise money for a rural school in the Deep South for poor black children.. The film portrays racial violence under white supremacy, and the lynching of a black man…”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1E0NrcnwAE)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux
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[…] Slavery by Another Name […]
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