Letters to the Editor

• On taboos

  [Read the article: One of Instapundit's favorite blogs speaks on race]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  On taboos

  ta·boo also ta·bu (t-b, t-)

  n. pl. ta·boos also ta·bus

  1. A ban or an inhibition resulting from social custom or emotional aversion.

  2.

  a. A prohibition, especially in Polynesia and other South Pacific islands, excluding something from use, approach, or mention because of its sacred and inviolable nature.

  b. An object, a word, or an act protected by such a prohibition.

  Many people say that "Race" is the most taboo topic of discussion in America.

  It is not.

  Drugwar is the most taboo topic in America.

  Americans have been having discussions about the topic of "Race" in the USA- across the divides of experience- for a great many years now. Sometimes productively, sometimes merely pointing fingers and assigning blame- but at least the points that matter are actually brought out in the open.

  Except for how that elephant in America's living room, Drug Prohibition, has warped this society across the board. Including its effects on poor and disenfranchised black communities. Not primarily through the presence of "drugs"- not primarily so; but through the nurturing of the criminal class that profits from the illegal drug trade, coincident with the concentration of enforcement and imprisonment efforts on poor and disenfranchised black/immigrant/minority communities.

  The Zero Tolerance Drugwar is indeed "racist" (although that is by no means it's only intolerable flaw.) It's a misreading of the facts to view that racism as due to a consciously designed, unified effort on the part of its adherents and administrators But it's racist to this extent- if the Drugwar was prosecuted against white Americans to the same extent that it's been prosecuted against black Americans, the white majority would find it intolerable, and do something to reform the laws.

  The actual dynamic that people are complaining about in this discussion as due to "black pathology" is actually more accurately the ascension of "gangster culture"- which was a social inevitability over the trajectory of the last 30 years or so, given that the illegal street drug market employs more Americans than the fast-food industry.

  You know, I really have been a cab driver, with well over 1000 night shifts in the years between 1985 and 2005. Maybe 2000...I lost track of the score long ago. I'm saying that because I've seen what's happened to the youth over that time, in the town where I drove.

  I also remember what it was like to be a teenager.

  In 50+ pages of mostly chasing tails and pointing fingers, this is perhaps the single most insightful comment I've read:

  "where does the idea of the burden of ''acting white'' come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an ''oppositional peer culture'' in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis."

  The difference? White kids have more options. We're more able to shed our legal transgressions and petty delinquencies, without being branded for life as The Enemy Within.

  And, no, I don't think that using drugs is "criminal behavior." Risky, foolhardy, reckless...likely so, especially for adolescents. But it ain't like mugging someone, or breaking into a house, or shoplifting. Or even littering, in my view. DUI is different. And no one should be able to "blame" their antisocial behavior on the dope they took. But no one can tell me that ingesting any form of illegal drug is more socially hazardous than binge drinking, which has become epidemic in this country.

  But what's really driven both the rise in incarceration- 400%!- and the rise of the Gangster Culture over the past three decades isn't using illegal drugs, it's selling them. That's how teenagers get to afford those "19-inch spinners" and road-quaking auto stereo systems, after all. That easy money is also what encourages them to adopt the fast life- the one that tends to hit the wall after a few years of AdultHood, often with one of those Mandatory Minimum sentences that "sends the message" that "dope dealing" is a worse crime than aggravated assault, rape, mayhem, or even murder. What's left to lose, after that?

  Like I say, if the Drugwar had been laid on white middle class communities the way it is Downtown, the citizenry wouldn't stand for it. Things would have changed long ago.

  But this situation is not spoken of, either in the mass media, or in the general run of discussions concerning so-called "black pathology."

  Permalink Monday, March 24, 2008 03:33 AM