JOHN MCWHORTER : Instead Of Marching, Let’s End The War On Drugs
By HHR | August 31st, 2010 | Category: Opinion/Reviews | 1 Comment »(hat tip: Booker Rising): 
The moderate-conservative commentator in New York City opines that it would have a far more positive impact on Black America than any number of symbolic marches: “The War on Drugs destroys black families. It has become a norm for black children to grow up with their fathers in prison and barely knowing them. Data are unanimous in showing that children, especially poor ones, do better with two parents. We see the young black man in a do-rag pushing a baby carriage as a welcome sight rather than as a norm. That must stop.”
He continues his commentary: “The War on Drugs discourages young black men from seeking legal employment. Because the drugs’ illegality keeps their price high, there are high salaries to be made in selling them — not at first as a low-level runner, but potentially as one rises in the hierarchy. This makes selling drugs a standing alternative to legal employment, especially if one has a poor education. The idea that selling drugs is the only choice available is refuted by the simple fact that immigrants, including black ones, regularly make do — as do plenty of black American men who happen not to ‘go the wrong way.’ Was the man who installed your cable TV a white guy with a degree from Vanderbilt? Did the last security guard you saw have blond hair?”
More commentary from Mr. McWhorter: “The War on Drugs brings firearms into black lives. Policing turf for drug sales entails guns, which then become tools for maintenance of the pecking order, including settling petty scores. A striking difference between surveys of black ghettos before the War on Drugs and today is how common guns have become. The War on Drugs lends a badge of honor to spending time in prison. Enduring prison time, regarded (with some justification) as an unjust punishment for selling people something that they want, is seen as a badge of strength. The ex-con becomes a hero rather than someone who went the wrong way. If there were no War on Drugs, this would be a non-issue.”
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Why are drugs such as cocaine, crack, marijuana and for that other group crystal meth illegal? The government has not come up with a method of taxation yet. When individuals such as the young black man in a doo-rag start voting for his contemporary who looks like him but wears a suit and is in the political arena the scenario will change. Ditto for those spike-hair wearing white guys with the pierced tongues voting for one of theirs who is clean cut. No question about the high salaries to be made from illicit drug sales especially when the customers from suburbia desire the product. Ingenuity will kick in and the suburbanites will get theirs delivered to them like Domino’s delivering a pizza. The lure of the drug franchise has been reinforced by the movies from Superfly to Sugar Hill(Wesley Snipes and Michael Wright) along with videos and gangstra rap. Firearms come into the mix and the users don’t get them from gun shows which travel city to city. Frankly marches only provide temporary relief , a sense of feeling good but the problem is still there after the march. During the rallies to go along with the march were slogans, songs and rhetoric, it’s not what they say, it’s what they leave out which is an outline on a plan to eradicate the problem.