My letter #1:
To: David Borden, Executive Director, Drug Reform Coordination Network From: John Bryant Date: 1 Dec 2000
In your editorial On the Nation's Highways http://www.drcnet.org/wol/162.html#thehighways
you say:
<begin>
The profiles, of course, are a self-fulfilling prophecy -- if you primarily search African Americans and Latinos, then those are the people you'll catch with drugs -- because those are the people you've searched. Yet we know from research that drug use and sales occur at approximately the same rate in both our minority and majority communities.
One of the consequences of racial profiling, therefore, is a disproportionately high conviction rate of African Americans on felony drug charges: Though blacks make up 13% of the population and 13% of drug users, they constitute more than 55% of those convicted for drug offenses. And under many states' felony disenfranchisement law, large numbers of black men have permanently lost the right to vote.
Felony disenfranchisement is properly regarded by African American leaders as one of the most important civil rights issues facing Americans today. In Florida, according to salon.com, a full third of all adult African American men have been disenfranchised for felony convictions. Only a small percentage of them would actually have had to vote in order to swing the current election in that state and thereby the nation.
Racial profiling, then, has impacted on our democracy, to the highest corridors of government
<end>
While I am in complete agreement with the need to legalize recreatonal drugs, I am suspicious about your assertion of 'equal use' by blacks and whites. This is because, among other things, white neighborhoods don't have crack houses, or drug dealers hanging around on stret corners at all hours (or ANY hours), or for the most part, urban gangs which battle for drug turf. It seems clear that drug use among blacks and non-hispanic whites is entirely different. But I would appreciate having your input, and I will publish it (or the lack of same) on my website if apt.
Borden responds:
Thanks for writing. There is a difference in the nature of the drug trade and some drug use in inner cities communities, in that inner city drug use often takes place much more in the open. This is one of the reasons that police tend to target inner city residents for drug searches -- it's easier and less expensive to apprehend a drug suspect than in the suburbs. It's easier to incarcerate a poor person than someone wealthier who will have access to a good lawyer. If a mayor or a police chief is looking for numbers of arrests, the most cost-effective way is to go to the inner city and do roundups.
Crack houses, as you've pointed out, are an example of this; you don't find them in the suburbs. But contrary to popular belief, crack is used at approximately the same rate among whites as among blacks. There just aren't any crack houses to point to, and hence it's harder to find.
Dave Borden DRCNet
My letter#2:
02 Dec
Dear Mr Borden:
My point is that you have asserted equal drug use among whites and blacks, but unequal arrests. Unless you can supply some statistics backing you up, I would have to say that your position is not merely unsubstiantiated, but -- due to the openness of drug use among blacks -- incredible. Your letter provides no such statistics. Asserting that police everywhere in America discriminate against blacks on drug arrests -- which is in effect what you are saying now -- not only fits into the realm of very silly conspiracy theory, but is a serious moral charge against the (mostly white) police, and thus must be substiantiated if it is to be maintained.-jb
From: David Borden To: socit2m1 Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2000 11:10 AM Subject: Re: Yr editorial
According to the Sentencing Project (http://www.sentencingproject.org/brief/5047.htm -- section III), African Americans use drugs regularly at a slightly higher rate than whites (7.4% vs. 6.5%), but make up only 13% of drug users in this country, but 35% arrested for drug possession, 55% of those convicted for drug possession, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.
The drug use statistic comes from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. They cite their own previous report for the arrest, conviction and incarceration data, and the full text of that report, Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later, is not online, only the summary, which doesn't have the references. I don't have a copy of that here at home, but I've read the report, and I remember when it came out that a statistician at the US Bureau of Justice Statistics was quoted saying that the report's findings were accurate. I assume those data come from BJS or FBI publications. BJS has a lot of data online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/.
This doesn't mean that the cops or other criminal justice people are acting with deliberate racist intent. There are systemic factors at work, which the link above discusses briefly. There is some uncertainty in the drug use stats, but they reflect the best that the research has been able to accomplish so far. The numbers taken together really don't leave much room for doubt: either 13 equals 74, or there's disparity in the criminal justice system.
Openness in drug use and sales among inner city black in no way indicates that drug use is more prevalent; it is an effect of the conditions prevalent in inner city life -- more homelessness, particularly among substance abusers, less privacy, more transience, weaker community social support structures, more broken families, less availability of drug treatment, etc. But none of this means that there is _more_ drug use; it only reflects the form it tends to take in certain environments.
Another way to look at it is this: two-thirds of American blacks today are in the middle class, and they don't have crack houses in their neighborhoods. Yet middle class blacks are victimized by racial profiling just as poor blacks are. One of my college friends who is finishing his PhD at Harvard has told me he and his wife talk about how lucky he is that _he_ hasn't been targeted by police yet. Cornel West wrote about his racial profiling experience in the introduction to Race Matters, commuting in a nice looking car on the way to teach a religion class at Williams College in rural western Massachusetts.
As for this being a serious moral charge against (mostly white) police officers, yes it is, and I have the New Jersey racial profiling CD archive and it is painfully well documented. There's no way the state's Attorney General would admit to such an embarrassing revelation if it hadn't been proven irrefutably. My friend's brother is a New Jersey state trooper, and he said that it's absolutely true, they are taught to target minorities, and that's what they do. We are going to be posting the full New Jersey archive on our web site, and you will be able to seek all the documentation there that you desire. (Note that black police officers are also known sometimes to profile blacks, so it's a deeply ingrained technique built into training and routine practicies, not deliberate racism in all cases.)
- Dave Borden
My letter #3:
03 Dec
Dear David Borden:
The report which you cite showing that blacks have only a slightly higher rate of drug use is from something called . Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Preliminary Results from the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1998, p 13. While I know nothing about SAMHSA, the idea that one could find out rates of drug use by a 'household survey' is stretching credibility. Drug use is a very personal matter, as well as illegal -- why would you assume that anyone would answer questions about drug use to strangers honestly? The only way to get an OBJECTIVE measure of drug use is to look at objectively verifiable stats such as number of street dealers, number of people admitted to emergency rooms for drug overdoses, etc. Such stats as these would indicate a much greater use of drugs among blacks.
You imply in your letter that police are universally trained to target blacks, apparently to sidestep the charges I made of conspiracy theory and that targeting of blacks is a moral slur on the mostly-white police who do the targeting. But that won't work -- somebody is still giving that universal training, so they are the conspirators and are morally tarred.
But grant for a moment that blacks are targeted universally. Could there be a reason for this? Yes -- 2 in fact. First, the greater perceived drug use -- crack houses, dealers on the streets, etc; and second, what you mentioned, greater social malaise (transience, vagrancy, family breakdown, etc) suggesting either that (1) drugs cause the greater malaise or (2) that the greater malaise leads to drug use. Either of these conditions means that drugs are a greater problem among blacks than whites, tho in (2) the drugs are merely a reflection of the problem, not a cause. (In fact, the situation is likely to be a combination -- drugs cause problems, and problems cause drugs). That is, blacks may be targeted because blacks are perceived as more frequent drug users and/or because drugs are seen as doing more harm to blacks. While you and I, as libertarians, may think it is none of the government's business to be social engineers, others may see targeting blacks under these circumstances as proper -- you target those for whom drugs are a problem, and who use them the most. So given the mindset of the Drug War, targeting blacks is not irrational.
You say:
Openness in drug use and sales among inner city black in no way indicates that drug use is more prevalent; it is an effect of the conditions prevalent in inner city life -- more homelessness, particularly among substance abusers, less privacy, more transience, weaker community social support structures, more broken families, less availability of drug treatment, etc. But none of this means that there is _more_ drug use; it only reflects the form it tends to take in certain environments.
I disagree. I would say that openness in drug sales is a good indicator of more use -- a lot more use. When people do a lot of something, it tends to show by becoming open. In contrast, there is no obvious relation between the frequency of homelessness, transience, broken families, etc, and the openness of drug sales, unless you just mean that such people are a bit more sloppy in concealing their illegal activities, which may be true, but doesn't explain the blatant openness shown by streetcorner dealers and crack houses.
In conclusion, there is a very simple solution to racial profiling, at least on the highways -- not that the lefty socialists and 'anti-racists' have the least interest in it, since it is a matter of self-responsibility rather than looking to the State for all blessings great and small. That solution is: TINTED WINDOWS.
May I suggest that you put that in your bong and smoke it?
-John Bryant (www.thebirdman.org)
My letter #4
04 Dec
Dear Dave:
Thanks for your letter. I enjoyed your good-natured banter, but am surprised that you haven't had any first-hand experience with dope. There has to be something notable about a leader in the drug legalization movement who hasn't used them. And a little child shall lead them, perhaps? Ah, but there I go with more of that good-natured banter, of which we may have had enuf at this point.
On a more serious note, my basic view is that I don't think you have successfully refuted my arguments; however, I have inserted a few comments into your text, marked by asterisks.
And thanks again for responding. -j
<begin Borden letter:>
John,
I'm going to address some of your points, though not in the order you made them:
May I suggest that you put that in your bong and smoke it?
First of all, I don't have a bong and I've never smoked marijuana or even cigarettes even once in my life. So put that in your crack pipe and smoke that.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist using that one. You did open yourself up to it. If the joke is in bad taste, your bad taste came first. :) But in reality, it's true that I've never even used marijuana.
<Quotation from my letter begins>
But grant for a moment that blacks are targeted universally. Could there be a reason for this? Yes -- 2 in fact. First, the greater perceived drug use -- crack houses, dealers on the streets, etc; and second, what you mentioned, greater social malaise (transience, vagrancy, family breakdown, etc) suggesting either that (1) drugs cause the greater malaise or (2) that the greater malaise leads to drug use. Either of these conditions means that drugs are a greater problem among blacks than whites, tho in (2) the drugs are merely a reflection of the problem, not a cause. (In fact, the situation is likely to be a combination -- drugs cause problems, and problems cause drugs). That is, blacks may be targeted because blacks are perceived as more frequent drug users and/or because drugs are seen as doing more harm to blacks. While you and I, as libertarians, may think it is none of the government's business to be social engineers, others may see targeting blacks under these circumstances as proper -- you target those for whom drugs are a problem, and who use them the most. So given the mindset of the Drug War, targeting blacks is not irrational.
<Borden responds>
I agree with most of this, maybe all of it. But drugs being a greater problem among blacks does not in and of itself imply that there is more use among blacks. It implies that the form of the use (and of the selling) is more problematic. Poor blacks have less access to treatment, run out of money faster than wealthy or middle class whites who are paying street prices for their addiction, and generally have weaker family or community support structures on which to rely for practical and moral support. In short, a poor drug addict has less room to fall before it becoming a big problem than a drug addict with access to resources.
<quotation from my letter begins:>
The report which you cite showing that blacks have only a slightly higher rate of drug use is from something called . Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Preliminary Results from the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1998, p 13. While I know nothing about SAMHSA, the idea that one could find out rates of drug use by a 'household survey' is stretching credibility. Drug use is a very personal matter, as well as illegal -- why would you assume that anyone would answer questions about drug use to strangers honestly? The only way to get an OBJECTIVE measure of drug use is to look at objectively verifiable stats such as number of street dealers, number of people admitted to emergency rooms for drug overdoses, etc. Such stats as these would indicate a much greater use of drugs among blacks.
<Borden responds:>
I agree with you that the drug use surveys are problematic. But the rest of your analysis is erroneous. The number of street dealers is _not_ an indication of greater use. It's an indication that the dealing is taking place on the street. Suburban drug dealers have much more privacy with which to deal in private. I don't have the reference handy for you, but I do know of research indicating that most drug dealing is of that hidden form and that it occurs in the suburbs just as much as the inner cities. It simply does not follow from the prevalence of open drug dealing that there is therefore more dealing in total. One must know how much drug dealing takes place in private elsewhere, in order to draw a meaningful conclusion.
<My answer:>
**** What you seem to be saying is that open drug dealing does not PROVE that more drug use is taking place, and with that I agree. But that is not the argument. The argument is that a greater amount of OPEN drug dealing makes it MORE PROBABLE that more drug use is occurring. More precisely, the argument is this: Assuming that dealing and use are considered together as a single activity, if an activity A occurs from time to time, but is generally hidden, and if there is a probability p(A) that you will catch a glimpse of it at any given time when it does occur, then it follows that the more times it happens, the greater is the probability p(A) that you will catch a glimpse of it. Or in short, the place where you see it most often in the open is the place where it is occurring most frequently in secret.
<Quote from my letter:>
You imply in your letter that police are universally trained to target blacks, apparently to sidestep the charges I made of conspiracy theory and that targeting of blacks is a moral slur on the mostly-white police who do the targeting. But that won't work -- somebody is still giving that universal training, so they are the conspirators and are morally tarred.
<Borden responds:>
I've spent much of the past several days going through the 91,000 pages that the New Jersey Attorney General's office on this subject, and I can tell you it is extremely clear that police have been trained to targets blacks and Latinos. The documents include interviews with former state troopers, explaining such training in detail, and explaining how they were trained to hide the fact of the training. There are news clippings of former troopers who spoke about this in public. There are detailed statistical analyses proving that the profiling took place. And there is proof that high-level police officials knew about it and tolerated it. The evidence is overwhelming.
The DEA comes out in the documents as a major culprit, encouraging state and local police to use race as a profile for drug searches.
You will get to see the whole thing when we're done posting it to the web.
I agree with you that this does not necessarily imply intentionally racist behavior on the part of most police. I also agree with you that the targeting of inner city minorities for the most part does not indicate intentionally racist behavior. The latter problem is driven primarily by the openness of the behavior. The former is driven by bad training and by deeply ingrained racist assumptions, but probably not by intentional racism in most cases. But that doesn't make the problem unreal, and as I've said, you'll be able to read the source material for yourself within a few days.
<My answer:>
****My original point was that there could be no 'universal conspiracy' against blacks, nor could there be any universal moral taint of white police, contrary to what you seemed to be saying. Your response is apparently that police are TRAINED to target blacks, but you do not seem to have acknowledged that this training is for a perfectly good reason, namely, (1) greater perceived drug use among blacks and (2) drugs being a greater social problem among them. The fact that there is a rationale for targeting blacks removes the moral taint and the conspiracy [in the morally opprobrious sense] charges, and it reduces all the hoo-ha over 'profiling' to zero importance (chuck dem 91.000 pages, babe!)
<end answer, begin letter>
In conclusion, there is a very simple solution to racial profiling, at least on the highways -- not that the lefty socialists and 'anti-racists' have the least interest in it, since it is a matter of self-responsibility rather than looking to the State for all blessings great and small. That solution is: TINTED WINDOWS.
<Borden responds>
I think tinted windows may be illegal, actually, I'm not sure. How could the police determine the driver's race, if the windows were tinted? :)
<My response>
**** ...thru a glass darkly ...
- Dave
My letter #5
04 Dec
Dave:
To my letter this morning I should have added the following:
You are attempting to garner support for drug legalization by showing that the Drug War produces 'victims of racism', namely blacks who are 'targeted' by mostly white cops who, if not themselves evil racists, are products of an evil racist system.
As I have shown, given the premise that there should be a Drug War (a premise I don't agree with), then the behavior of (mostly white) police toward blacks is appropriate, because of greaer perceived drug use and greater perceived social pathology among blacks. Hence your imputation of victimhood to blacks at the hands of whites is not merely factually wrong, but it is a slur on whites. Hence I urge you not to fall into lockstep with the antiwhite politically correct chorus by bashing whites. Not only is it morally wrong, but it is bad strategy: The Left loves PC, but you don't need to appeal to the Left, because they already agree with drug legalization. But you DO need to appeal to the white middle class, whose (stupid or ignorant) conservative element is the bulwark favoring the Drug War, and bashing them is not the way to win them over. -j
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