A crack baby (1989- ) is a being of White American mythology. They are babies born to women who take crack cocaine. They are born hooked on cocaine and can suffer lifelong brain damage.
In 1989 in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer warned us:
“The inner-city crack epidemic is now giving birth to the newest horror: a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth. … [a] race of (sub) human drones, [whose] future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority … The dead babies may be the lucky ones.”
Note: “inner-city” is Whitespeak for Black.
That was followed by a flood of frightening headlines, like this in USA Today:
“Crack’s Toll Among Babies: A Joyless View, Even of Toys”
The New York Times reported how:
“maternity wards around the country ring with the high-pitched ‘cat cries’ of neurologically impaired crack babies.”
Judy Howard, MD of UCLA said that the brain function that makes us human is “wiped out”.
But the crack baby apocalypse never came.
Why not?
In 1985 the New England Journal of Medicine reported that crack babies were smaller, sicker, moodier and less social. But it warned that the sample size was small – only 23 women – so no firm conclusions could be drawn. Larger, better studies were needed.
Unfortunately, many of the studies that followed were poorly designed: no control groups, no account made for the effects of other drugs, like alcohol, or the effects of poverty, like poor prenatal care. Studies that supported the crack baby stereotype were more likely to be accepted by medical journals than better designed studies that showed it was not true.
In 1992 the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warned of a “rush to judgement” on cocaine’s long-term effects on children, that the evidence was “far too slim.”
But in 2015, it was still news that the crack baby thing is a myth.
Effects of crack on the unborn: It does not get babies hooked. It seems to have no effect on IQ when you control for environment. The only clear-cut effect of heavy cocaine use is low birthweight. Being a crack baby has no effect on life and health outcomes – quite unlike the poverty and violence that many crack babies grow up in.
- Powdered cocaine and crack cocaine have the same effect.
- Alcohol is far more damaging than cocaine or any other commonly used drug. There is even a medical name for it, not just a newspaper one: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, also known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
But the White press went nuts over crack babies, not powdered cocaine babies or alcohol babies. Because crack users are stereotyped as Black. Crack babies fit nicely into one of the four frames of colour-blind racism: Black pathologies.
Even the stereotype within the stereotype is untrue: Most crack users are White. Blacks are twice as likely to use crack – but there are five times more Whites!
– Abagond, 2016.
Source: “Medical Apartheid” (2006) by Harriet A. Washington; Al Jazeera (2015).
See also:
- colour-blind racism: the four frames
- Black People: The Republican User’s Guide
- Whitespeak
- stereotype – easier to “prove” than disprove
- eugenics
- racial profiling
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I thought it was true for heroin (that the baby can be born addicted).
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Let’s not forget those heroin/opium babies in Appalachian neighborhoods. There are three generations of white heroin babies in Appalachia. In fact, the last two generations of white heroin babies are heavily addicted to OxyContin – a popular substitute for heroin in Appalachia. OxyContin (aka “hillbilly heroin”) and street opiates, like heroin, are taking a horrific toll on the White communities of Appalachia, which White propagandists like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jared Taylor and Colin Flaherty are downplaying.
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I read about this in Medical Apartheid (which is a MUST READ, by the way). Also look up Dr. Carl Hart, he’s done a lot of research on this and debunking many myths about drugs overall.
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@Indignant: Harriett A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid is on my list of so many books i want to read. I have read snippets and I feel compelled to buy it.
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White people abuse the hell out of drugs but let them tell it it’s just black folks in the hood that are crack heads. In my city there are white folks in the downtown streets who are strung out and messed up. In the suburbs of my city the white kids and adults are strung out on OxyContin. The poor whites are strung out on Methamphetamine with rotten black teeth. It’s only a problem until it affects whites in their communities.
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When there has been an explosion of a house it’s usually a meth head’s home.
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For at least the last five years, Methamphetamine has been devastating Amerika’s mid-western states and small, rural towns across the country. The vast majority of Meth users are white, especially women. In most instances, they are the individuals with no teeth and disheveled.
Local governments and support groups are searching for ways to assist, including the dispensation of medication. People in high places are doing just the opposite when crack was deliberately flooding black communities across the US in the 1990’s. Furthermore, the babies that are being born to meth addicted, white mothers and are not being labeled or demonized as “meth babies” as they did black mothers.
I keep wondering, who do white people think they’re fooling?
https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2015/01/narrative-discovery-in-search-medication-to-treat-methamphetamine-addiction
Deuteronomy 30:7 And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. (karma is a b#tch)
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Put that in your pipe and smoke it let’s see what happens sheesh i got 2 weeks clean an important part of my blessings!
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Meth is more like heroin regarding the physical addiction; cocaine addiction is regarded to be more ‘psychological.’
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I remember a news story on television about Crack Babies being called “Super Predators”. But there are no such stories about Meth Babies who are actually born with severe mental deficits. No prison sentences to ensure that the mothers of Meth Babies are thrown in to jail for their drug abuse, because when WW are addicted to a drug it is a “disease” so treatment, not prison, is the cure. I remember that “charity groups” we’re buying up billboards in Black neighborhoods advertising that they would pay Black Crack Mothers to get their tubes tied. I’m sure there are no such “charities” offering payment and encouragement for WW to be sterilized in this way in White neighborhoods. Now drug use is worthy of pity and th users of Meth, read Whites, should be treated accordingly. I wonder if sentencing for having a baggie of Meth is met with mandatory sentencing like life in prison. I’m going to go with no. I could be wrong…but… Why? Who are the primary users of Meth? Answer that and you will understand why.
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Funny, me mom used it And i’m shaking And i have a bad memorie, but it should be Something else then. LISTEN JUST DONT USE ANY DUCKING DRUGS DURING THAT! Djeeez
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Yeah, I remember my mom using it too when she was pregnant with me. But unlike most other Crack babies, my memory is much better than most peoples.
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omg watch american crime it is really effing harsh stories but regina king gives a great speech to her son about hoodrats and rocks and stuff i didnt understand why she had like two differenct characters from season 1 to 2 but it’s in 2 when she’s secular
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california supposedly has all personal possession a misdemeanor now, in nj or kansas you won’t be so lucky
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I recall that the “war on drugs” kicked into high gear at the height of the free basing epidemic. Stories about “crack babies” were meant to justify the over policing of certain areas as well as the passing of three strike laws and the increased jail time for “Crack” usuers.
If Blacks rocked cocaine into free base it was identified as “crack”. But if white people rocked cocaine it was “free base”.
Judges were sending Blacks to prison for the rest of their lives but whites with legal help would get rehab for the same “crime”.
It’s amazing when you think about it. The same drug identified differently depending upon the color of your skin.
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Comment lost in cyberspace. or maybe in mod.
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To demonstrate what I mean compare the Wikipedia pages of adult film star John Holmes with Rick James.
On John Holmes,
“By 1978, Holmes was reputed to be earning as much as $3,000 per day as a porn performer.[5][8] Around this time (the late 1970s), his consumption of cocaine and freebasing were becoming a serious problem.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holmes_(actor)
On Rick James,
“An addiction to drugs hampered his career by the late 1980s. In the 1990s, his legal troubles, which included kidnapping and torturing two women while under the influence of crack, led him to serve a three-year sentence at California’s Folsom State Prison.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_James
Same drug identified differently by race.
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@Mary Burrell
I strongly recommend that you go ahead and buy it. It’s a treasure trove of well researched information. I have to warn you though, that book made me cry real tears.
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it should obvious by now that the war on drugs and all associated propaganda is really about white population dominace locally and globally.
why are white male police allowed to murder with impunity esp if the victum is black.
because our species is has dominace hiearchies and violence and lies are an important part of maintaining one’s group position in said hiearchy.
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A month or so ago, CNN did a heart felt story on drug abuse that is afflicting white communities in Boston. Mind you, this is the same network that referred to Freddie Gray’s mother as an illiterate heroin addict on their website. Another example of of how white heroin addicts are given a humanistic, sympathetic response while black heroin addicts are seen as “illiterate”. Help the white man, discard the negro in our finest jail cells.
The prescription drug and heroin overdose has becoming an “American” crisis. Notice how I said American in quotes. When blacks were using drugs in the 80’s and 90’s, it was billed as a “black problem”. No talk of treatment. No talk of going after the source of these drugs. It was black people are lazy and dysfunctional. I know this has to piss off a lot of black folks when they see things like that. Not so much as to relish in the suffering of white drug users, but the Jim Crow style treatment that is given to blacks on this issue.
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I guess I am the only physician to post..so here goes….EVERYONE should read “Medical Apartheid”
Meth , heroine, cocaine(any form) can and does cause neurological distress on the born and unborn. Now a question to ask researchers: is the damage permanent or not? What type of damage can be measured? It has not been well studied. How can a study like that be ethical and well designed? AND the real problem is …no one but public health people really care.
Yes crack is associated with the underclass,poor aka “black people”
Cocaine is associated with an affluent mystique aka” white”
Thus longer sentences for crack distribution/possession…yeah the whole drug war thing… which actually lead to the formation of DEA in the early 20th century. Heck cocaine was a component of Coca Cola in the heyday.
Drug laws were originally made to control the “minority” populations anyway…that was the whole point! Look up the Harrison laws.
So, why the push for marijuana legalization? A bunch of white folk just wanted to enjoy it and profit from it….. and they do.
Now, unfortunately physicians are letting people get hook on opioid narcotics which are very addictive for some folks. But now ..they doctor shop ….I see it all the time.
Now white folks in my age group (Generation X) are dying off and narcotics NOT marijuana is the new health crisis.
I wonder.
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the white heroin sympathizers was forced on us by rush limbaugh the fat jerk
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abagond didn’t post my american history of cocaine part i i submitted it eh it was ok not great
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Glad you put up a link to Whitney Houston because this reminds me of how the media basically told us that Whitney was on crack, even though she insisted that “crack is wack.” Just goes to show the media’s incessant perpetuation of black stereotypes.
Regardless of the illegal substance, when more whites use them than blacks, but blacks are arrested more and have tougher sentences for blacks, this is clear evidence of a racist INjustice system.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NONE of it is true?!? My God Euro-Americans will stop at nothing to tarnish us won’t they?
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Michael Cooper…“OxyContin (aka “hillbilly heroin”) and street opiates, like heroin, are taking a horrific toll on the White communities of Appalachia, which White propagandists like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jared Taylor and Colin Flaherty are downplaying.”
Can’t downplay the horrific toll ,nor the inequity in the way Blacks on crack were treated THEN, versus how white OxyContin/heroin users are being treated NOW anymore, that’s for sure! Interesting piece from Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/07/compassionate-drug-treatment-policy-racism-white-heroin-users-politics
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“…White propagandists like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jared Taylor and Colin Flaherty are downplaying.”
Always the ZERO SUM game with these WHITE folks.
Doing their best to make sure that nothing is put in place that could possibly benefit Black and Brown people.. because that would mean undeserving Black and Brown people are “getting over” on very “hard working” Amerikans.
Speaking of getting over, has anyone recently asked Bernie S. what his plans are to pull his home state, Vermont, the highest illegal DRUG USE state, out of its WHITE quagmire?
(S)elections aka staged productions every four years are such fun entertainment.
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Charles Krauthammer, who helped to push the crack baby myth, is dead.
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CNN condemns Trump’s words but somehow still manages to praise like this and also continues to have Stephen Moore or (Steven) Moore on their panel of experts. Like a double edge sword to reasoning.
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@abagond
How do you feel about the Agent Orange Baby myth?
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@ the tidbit about poverty and violence. That’s the driving force behind the whole industry. The wanting to escape that but then there’s that shallow desire for material possessions without regard to the composition of which they are made of.
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@ TeddyBearDaddy
I do not know that one.
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