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     Racism, Classism, and the Drug War:
A Discussion With Cliff Thornton In the United States, African Americans account for 13% of drug users, yet they make up 37% of those arrested, 53% of those convicted, and 67% of those sent to jail for drug offenses. Overall, African Americans and Latinos comprise 80% of people in prison for drug offenses, even though the majority of drug users are white.  "Many see the drug war as being supported by three major phenomena; all
of which result in unequal treatment based either directly or indirectly on
race, class or white privilege:
1) Greed. Drug markets are a dandy source of 'black' money which ends up
being recycled (laundered) through our banks and other financial institutions
and then made available for all sorts of scams.
2) Overt Racism. The malignant racism which justified slavery is definitely
not dead. It survived under Jim Crow (segregation) and continues to
survive under the drug war. There is abundant evidence that blacks and
browns actually have fewer drug problems than whites but you'd never know it
from our media.
3) Fear and the intellectual dishonesty that fear promotes in Medicine and
the "treatment" disciplines (Psychology and Sociology). This is a very complex
issue; but there's no doubt that the drug war survives partly because Medicine
has been so thoroughly co-opted."
--Clifford Wallace Thornton, Jr.
To book Cliff Thornton on your campus, please contact SSDP Field Director, Micah Daigle, at micah@ssdp.org
The
following video is a short documentary about Cliff Thornton's Green
Party bid for Governor of Connecticut. SSDP does not endorse any
candidates or political parties -- the video is simply here to display
Mr. Thornton's experience in grassroots political advocacy.
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