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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
The Racist Roots Of The War On Drugs & The Myth Of Equal Protection For People Of Color, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
The Racist Roots Of The War On Drugs & The Myth Of Equal Protection For People Of Color, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Faculty Publications & Other Works
By 2021, the costs and pain arising from the propagation of the American racial hierarchy reached such heights that calls for anti-racism and criminal justice reform dramatically expanded. The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police vividly proved that the social construction of race in America directly conflicted with supposed American values of equal protection under law and notions of basic justice. The racially-driven War on Drugs (WOD) fuels much of the dissonance between American legal mythology—such as the non-discrimination principle and the impartial administration of the rule of law—and the reality of race in the United States. …
Roadmap For Anti-Racism: First Unwind The War On Drugs Now, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Roadmap For Anti-Racism: First Unwind The War On Drugs Now, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Faculty Publications & Other Works
The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans. As a result, the WOD led to mass incarceration of people of color at many times the rate of white Americans. Indeed, as a stark illustration of the power of race in America, even after Illinois and Colorado legalized cannabis, over-policing in communities of color resulted in a …