Their Crimes, Our Crimes
The most common response when one points to racism in the criminal justice system is to note that our prisons are three-quarters black.  They are in prison because they are guilty of committing crimes, no other reason, certainly not anything linked to racism in the system itself.

Michelle Alexander, author of New Jim Crow, in response to a question during an interview…helps us see the misdirection central to this denial.

“The dramatically different manner in which we, as a nation, responded to the crisis presented by drunk driving and the crisis caused by the emergence of crack cocaine speaks volumes about who we value, and who we view as disposable. 

During the 1980s, at the same time that crack cocaine was making headlines, a grassroots movement was emerging to address the widespread and sometimes fatal problem of drunk driving. Unlike the drug war, which was born of deliberate political strategy to exploit our nation's racial divisions (part of the Southern Strategy to flip the South from blue to red), the anti-drunk driving movement was a bottom-up movement led most notably by mothers whose families were shattered by deaths caused by drunk driving.

By the end of that decade, drunk drivers were responsible for about 22,000 deaths annually, while overall alcohol-related deaths were close to 100,000 per year. By contrast, during the same time period…even though crack babies, crack dealers, and so-called crack whores were dominating the news…the total number of deaths related to ALL illegal drugs combined was tiny compared to the number of deaths caused by drunk drivers.

The total of all drug related deaths due to AIDS, drug overdose, or the violence associated with the drug trade, was estimated at 21,000 annually - less than the number of deaths caused directly by drunk drivers and a small fraction of the number of alcohol-related deaths each year.

So how did we respond to these competing crises that were unfolding simultaneously?

Well, in response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense - typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense. Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, was given a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

The vastly different sentences afforded drunk drivers and drug offenders tells us who is viewed as disposable - someone to be purged from the body politic - and who is not.

Drunk drivers are predominately white and male. White men comprised 78 percent of the arrests for this offense in 1990 when the new mandatory minimum sentences were adopted. They are generally charged with misdemeanors and typically receive sentences involving fines, license suspension, and community service.

Although drunk driving contains a far greater risk of violent death than the use or sale of illegal drugs, the societal response to drunk drivers has generally emphasized keeping the person functional and in society, while attempting to respond to the dangerous behavior through treatment and counseling. People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison.”

How can we explain this choice?  Our choice to treat the addiction more often suffered by those who look like us as a public health problem, with nearly no time in jail and no felony record to prevent turning a life around…and yet to treat the addiction more easily associated with those who do not look like us as a crime that can only be responded to with extreme punishment creating felony records the make turning a life around a monumental challenge…even though the behavior of those who look like us causes so much more harm?