The War on Drugs: Crash Course Black American History #42

The War on Drugs is a decades-long United States policy intended to curb illegal drug use and trafficking. Long story short: it has not worked to reduce drug use or trade, and the policy has had devastating effects, especially on communities of color. Today we’ll talk about the history of the War on Drugs, what it was trying to accomplish, and how it contributed to the US as a carceral state and the nation that imprisons more of its population than any country in the world.

Clint’s book, How the Word is Passed is available now!

VIDEO SOURCES
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010).
Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Khalil Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Beth Ritchie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

Carly Hayden Foster, The Welfare Queen: Race, Gender, Class, and Public Opinion, 15 Race, Gender & Class 162–179 (2008).

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