cannabisnews.com: Face it: In U.S., Drugs ensnare Minorities!





Face it: In U.S., Drugs ensnare Minorities!
Posted by FoM on March 07, 1999 at 07:30:53 PT

Let's begin with a proclamation that has proven to be a firing offense in the politically correct environment of 1999 America: Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately responsible for the trafficking of most illegal drugs.
How dare anyone make such a scurrilous statement? Here's how. The statistics tumble forth with indisputable authority, in Boston, in New York, in virtually any city that compiles such facts. Minorities are overrepresented within the enemy camp in the never-ending war on drugs. So along comes Col. Carl Williams, the embattled head of the New Jersey State Police, to speak the obvious. In an interview published Sunday, he noted that when President Clinton recently raised the issue of drugs, he went to Mexico, not England or Ireland. "Today, with this drug problem . . . it is most likely a minority group that's involved with that."He went on to add: "If you are looking at the methamphetamine market, that seems to be controlled by the motorcycle gangs, which are basically white. If you are looking at heroin and stuff like that, your involvement there is more or less Jamaican." Nothing dishonest there, or particularly racist. Even criminal enterprises are based on trust, and dealers tend to band together by ethnic groups — whether Jamaicans, Haitians, Colombians — to form distribution groups focused on a single narcotic, such as cocaine. Recall La Cosa Nostra.But the ground thundered in New Jersey Monday, and the reverberations are being felt in Boston. One black New Jersey legislator, Leroy Jones, called Williams' views "dastardly," "ill" and "sickened." Gov. Christine Todd Whitman apparently agreed. She fired Williams, saying, "His comments today are inconsistent with our efforts to enhance public confidence in the State Police." Enhance public confidence? What about the matter of fighting crime?We have become a society so obsessed with racial and political correctness that we can't even have an honest, statistically based discussion on crime trends if it happens to prove unflattering to blacks and Hispanics. We have become a society that values words more than actions, perception more than reality. We have become a society unintentionally widening the racial divide by our miscast attempts to bridge it. By paying lip service to black leaders, Whitman hurt the communities of color they purport to represent — in New Jersey, in Boston, and everywhere else. Where there are criminals, there are victims, and in minority neighborhoods across the nation, families, streets and entire blocks have been ruined by the scourge of drugs. Will police now believe their jobs are at risk if they seek to address racially influenced crime patterns?It is gospel within law enforcement that black and Hispanic criminals control the drug distribution networks into most major American cities, including Boston. In the most recent Drug Enforcement Agency report detailing patterns in Massachusetts, agents wrote that "Colombian violators and Dominican violators continue to be the primary cocaine distributors."Of heroin, the DEA wrote: "The most prominent distribution networks are of Dominican, Colombian, Puerto Rican and Asian origin." Of marijuana, the DEA laid much of the blame on Mexican nationals operating from Arizona and San Diego.Even the Rev. Eugene Rivers of Boston, a black advocate of personal responsibility, acknowledges the problem within urban minority groups, saying, "If it is true that most white-collar crimes are committed by white men, it is equally true that a disproportionate number of black men are associated with crimes of violence and drugs." But according to Whitman, we're not supposed to speak these truths. It is racist. It promotes stereotypes. It engenders ill will among minority leaders who allow rhetoric to trump reality.Last year, ironically, Whitman supported Williams amid accusations that the New Jersey State Police practiced "profiling" — pulling over disproportionate numbers of minority drivers. Now Williams's logical words are deemed more offensive than his questionable actions. "It shows the craven cowardice, the hypocrisy of political leaders in dealing with issues of race," says Boston lawyer Harvey Silverglate. In the end, there's really only one pattern that matters, and it's not of the criminal, but the victim. Blacks and Hispanics need disproportionate help, and stereotypes be damned, they should get it.Brian McGrory's e-mail address is mcgrory globe.com.http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,65000250,00.html?
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