Tony Snow: Jesse Jackson creates the “most dangerous problem” we face
Published by Mike Stark April 19th, 2006 in Tony SnowNothing pisses me off quite as much as a disingenuous argument. Snow put up a doozy yesterday - claiming that the Jesse Jackson’s of the world are responsible for the black underclass.
I’m not sure if everything I said came through in the audio, but in a nutshell, here is my take:
Racism is bornout in the drug war. The drug war and its secondary effects have resulted in over 25% of young black men being caught up in the penal system. These men are sent off to prisons - where they can’t very well act as fathers for their children - and when they get out… well good luck finding a job. Entire communities have been systematically destroyed by white legislatures and governors passing ridiculous drug laws without regard for the effects on minority populations.
Meanwhile… On college campuses, white kids do drugs, pain-free, with abandon… More drugs are bought and sold on college campuses than anywhere else - white kids have the money and there is very little enforcement/risk.
Contrarians will point to the violence in urban neighborhoods. Let me tell you something: if you introduced draconian enforcement practices to white America, you’d also see an increase in violence.
Finally, the statistics speak for themselves. If 25% of white kids were rotting in jail and had no prospects upon their release, the drug war would be a lot more sensible. White America would not put up with 25% of their sons in jail, lives destroyed.
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two points i would like to make:
1) It seems that tony snow kept making the assumption that the black people in jail were just the dealers and white people were the users. the implications to this a big, but i will refrain from that. what he didn’t acknoweldge was that many people in jail for drug offenses aren’t dealers. many get caught with drugs in their possession or worse with drugs in the vicinity or someone else’s possession. thus, guilt by association. i’m not just spewing theories. i’m basing it from my own witnessings. but i challenge anyone to think of the implications of the assumption that blacks are dealers and whites are users. what does that do to the focus of the 2 decade long Drug War.
2) This isone of the few times i’ve heard a white guy call another white guy racist. it’s actually refreshing because an important resolution to ending racism is that white people deal with themselves and other white people to address the issues of race. this actually hasn’t been done on a significant scale since the civil rights era. It’s also important to note that many of the events that shaped the civil rights movements wouldn’t have came about had not white people been heavily involved. Which kind of kills the notion that the only way for black people or anyone else to overcome racism is to “attone”. Since we didn’t create racism it’s hard to say that anything short of all out rebellion or war would get rid of it, if white people didn’t take an active stance against it. Liberia and Haiti proved that even that may not be the best solution.
In short, I applaud your efforts and understanding. Good luck in Law school i think you would do well.
i dont think you shouldve called him a racist, but good job on tying in the drug war in a relevant way. its too bad so many issues have come up in the past 5 years or so that, for me at least, the drug war doesnt get too much attention. i dont understand how anyone can defend it. if anyone who supports the drug war happens to come here and read this, i would like to know, was alcohol prohibition a good idea? did that cause more violent crime or less?
What are the chances that, if Tony Snow gets appointed as the White House press secretary (as some rumors suggest), that the White House press corps will confront Tony about statements like these? I would say about 5,000,000,000,000 to 1.
thx for the info good work .
If white college kids hung out on the corner by their dorm and sold crack, you think that they wouldn’t be arrested and put in jail?
There are discrete ways of doing/selling drugs and non-discrete ways.
In poorer neighborhoods, less discrete ways are used because more product can be sold in little bits for little amounts of money. These are the people that will be less discrete more often and have a higher chance of ending up in jail.
I think it has less to do with tacit racism and more to do with a lack of discretion leading to a higher chance of being caught. Couple this with being poor and not affording a good lawyer and you have a higher chance of going to jail.
The authorities won’t hesitate to fully prosecute some white trailer trash cooking meth just because he’s white.
Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the major institutions of society. By this definition, only White people can be racist, because only White people as a group have that power.
Politicians from both the Democratic and Republican Parties scrambled to appear “tough on crime,” embracing the so-called war on drugs, which tripled the prison population between 1980 and 1995. Two-thirds of those who entered the prison system during that period were Black, Latino or poor, and the vast majority of them were nonviolent drug offenders.
Today, with the prison population swollen to more than 2 million, African Americans make up just 12 percent of the U.S. population and only 13 percent of drug users, yet account for 35 percent of drug arrests and 53 percent of drug convictions. Blacks are also 43 percent of those on death row.
Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 30 percent of 12 year-old Black boys will spend time in jail in their lifetimes–far more than will attend college. And because many states have laws denying present and former inmates the right to vote, an estimated 13 percent of all Black men–including one in every three in Alabama and Florida–have been disenfranchised.
Racism, not criminal records, explains the high unemployment rate for Black men today. A recent Wall Street Journal report showed that in the city of Milwaukee, a white job applicant with a criminal record has a better chance of being called for an interview than a Black man with no criminal record.
“The disadvantage carried by a young Black man applying for a job as a dishwasher or a driver is equivalent to forcing a white man to carry an 18-month prison record on his back,” concluded reporter David Wessel. And only racism can explain these statistics:
– Segregation in public schools, which decreased continuously from the 1950s to the late 1980s, has now returned to levels not seen in three decades.
– Black infants are almost two-and-a-half times more likely than white infants to die before the age of one, a wider gap than in 1970.
– In 2002, 79 percent of Blacks aged 25 and older were high school graduates, compared with 30 percent in 1968. Yet the typical Black household had a net worth of just $19,000, compared with $121,000 for whites.
More than 200 years since slavery was written into the U.S. constitution, its racist legacy remains–and the words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass remain true: “Without struggle, there can be no progress.” Only a struggle that shakes the foundation of U.S. society can end racism.
what you quoted are some facts ,but not the truth.i am black and grow up in a working class family. i have never been in jail. may 67 year old dad is from the south worked his but off . saved his money and started his own business.father’s need to take responisilty and stop making the state there childrens baby daddy.many black’s are racist and jesse jackson is a false prophet leading all you dummies to self-hate and killing each other ,destoying your own neigborhood , spendind all your money on clothes,cars,thousands on spinning wheels and at the end of the day want ex- pesident carter to give you a box of free cheese and powder milk. take responsiblity for of your life and brake this cycle from over the next genernation. jackson has had you negroes in the wilderness for 40 long hard years. while my dad ,myself, and my children have been enjoying the promise. i’m glad my great-grand parents didn’t missing the boat. i might not like the way i came but GOD turn my tragedy into triumph. thank you JESUS!!!!!!!!!!