#mandatoryminimums

In this post here, I’d like to discuss the drug sentencings that have ruptured the structure of the black family in American society.  I’d like to preface this post with my belief that, based on historical evidence and the research of others, that the U.S. government has been creating ways to legally incarcerate black people since the slaves were “freed” after the Civil War.  This desire to maintain white supremacy is now heavily embedded into our legal and criminal justice system, to the point where things cannot be tweaked and if we were to see true justice, we must abolish the system and start a-new. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 served many people, we don’t see segregation today like America once used to, but racism didn’t magically end because of the act.  In fact, Richard Nixon really planted seeds for the division of black families and unity over the past 50 years by implementing the “war on drugs” mentality to the minds of Americans via the media.  We saw this rhetoric grow when the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1986, changing a rehabilitating system into a punitive system; a point in time where the mass incarceration began to skyrocket even more than at already did in the late 60’s.  This Anti-Drug Abuse Act is human abuse, in my opinion, because of the devastating mandatory minimum sentencing it created.  As the availability of crack-cocaine was growing exponentially among poor neighborhoods of mostly colored people, the sentencing created a huge wave of black Americans being arrested and imprisoned for years due to their first, low-level drug offenses.  Under this act, a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute fifty grams or more of crack cocaine must be sentenced to no less than ten years in prison.  Comparatively, if a person intended to distribute 5,000 grams of powder cocaine, they would be sentenced for mandatory minimum of 10 years.  This created the famous 100:1 ratio that ruined thousands of lives in America.  Crack cocaine is the only drug where there is a mandatory minimum penalty for a first offense of simple possession.  

Edward Clay of Missouri has a prime case to exemplify this harsh disparity.  Clary was caught with over 50 grams of crack, meaning that he was subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years’ imprisonment, according to federal law.  Clary, an eighteen-year-old black man with no prior convictions, charged that this penalty differential had a disproportionate and unjustifiable impact on him and other blacks because blacks are much more likely than whites to traffic crack.  Observable in the Eastern District of Missouri, between 1988 and 1992, blacks constituted 98.2 percent of the defendants convicted of crack cocaine charges (Kennedy, 365).  Judge Clyde S. Cahill refused to sentence Clary in accordance with the mandatory sentencing after coming to the conclusion that the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was a product of “unconscious racism” as well as “irrational and arbitrary” decision-making (Kennedy).  Cahill noted how racism has historically influenced the creation of drug policy. Fear and hatred of Asians was part of the legal measures put into place against the distribution or use of opium, a drug commonly associated in the public mind with Chinese people.  As I stated earlier, evidence has come out since his presidency that Richard Nixon and his associates were, in fact, targeting black and hippie communities at the end of the 60’s and into the 70’s.  This association was easy for him to achieve with the seemingly ever-growing power that mass media was attaining in America. Cahill also recognized the Harrison Act of 1914, which was the first federal law to prohibit he distribution of cocaine and heroin, which were commonly associated with black prostitutes and criminals in large cities.  

Released in 2016, a documentary called “13th” came out, which exposes the many flaws and loops in our criminal justice system. The documentary really exemplifies the disproportionate incarceration of Black Americans, as well as the police brutality that is increasingly present nowadays.  As upsetting as it is to learn about or witness, I am grateful it is getting the light of day.  I remember the film beginning with an audio clip of former U.S. President Barack Obama stating that the U.S. had 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.  These mind-rattling statistics were present throughout the movie, as well as touching on other disheartening subjects like that of convict leasing and the silencing of civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.  The way the filmed addressed the mass incarceration that plagues this country was very well done, very easy for the new viewer to follow along, and addressed many of the reasons why our system is so seemingly broken and geared to destroy black families and communities as a whole.

In 2011, Texas told Canada that the old ways of mandatory minimum sentencing doesn’t work… But when will we listen?

Texas to Canada: Harper's Crime Bill a huge mistake