Speaking of Crack…
Joe Biden owes us. He owes us at least as much as he has cost us. I grew up in the Crack Era and where I’m from, no one escaped its effects. They w. When “they” combatted the Crack Epidemic, they hit urban communities hard. “Them Boys” came in swinging, and they didn’t stop until everything ran red or just went dark. Unfortunately, the government body who sent them in to tear us down didn’t bother coming up with a plan for afterward. Their concern was protecting their own. Joe knows. He was there. He knew the cause of the destruction, and he led the laws that caused the effect we live today. Whether the current "harm reduction" effort intentionally includes the Black community or not, resolving inclusivity comes twenty years late and is significantly more than a dollar short.
In the early morning on the second day of the second week of “Black History Month,” a shock-value headline went viral. By 1:00pm, mainstream media had successfully branded it as “right-wing misinformation.” However, if you caught it at 6 am, it looked like the Biden administration had launched a program that allocated 30 million dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to support racially-equitable “Harm Reduction;” This, through the fair and inclusive distribution of crack-pipes.
If you think a plan as asinine as this could only come from right-wing trolls, it's likely you're also content with Hip Hop Recognition Month and Juneteenth as the only legislation Biden has passed for Black people since Black people literally got their “booties to the poll” to get him in the White House. To others, this could easily have come from the brain of Joe “You Aint Black” Biden. However, the crack pipe “smoke kits” only show up one time in the opioid-focused health order. One could conclude, Biden’s administration threw an ill-advised bone out there to appear inclusive. When it backfired, they went into damage control mode. I wonder if he’d rather be the guy giving crack pipes to the black community his own crack laws failed, or the guy LYING about giving crack pipes to the black community while really just allocating more funds to the current opioid epidemic? Black America deserves better. I agree with Twitter: someone owes Ice Cube an apology.
The opioid epidemic has knocked almost all illicit drugs off the charts. Specifically, Fentanyl, which accounts for 75% of the reported overdose deaths, upped to 85% if you understand the other overdoses were drugs laced with Fentanyl. The leaders of such narratives have a strange doctrine for relaying the big picture. Let us not ignore the detail that our government’s BFF Pfizer is the pharmaceutical giant who shares in the manufacturing and distributing of Fentanyl. They also make the FDA-approved and recommended anti-overdose counterpart Naloxone, the actual star of the now infamous harm reduction kits. Perhaps we should ask how our government is always so close to the harms that plague our communities, yet so removed from responsibility. That is until it’s time to cure at their discretion. It’s widely known, amongst Black communities at least, the government was key in introducing and maintaining crack in our communities. We remain in wait, mostly in federal prisons, for that harm reduction.
The now infamous Crime Bill that Joe Biden once proudly owned as the “1994 Biden Crime Bill” came under scrutiny prior to him being elected. “Three Strikes and You’re Out” resulted in people going in young and spending their entire life in prison for offenses that should never have been felonies. Black communities, who were the majority recipients of this smackdown, suffered an unmeasurable loss. The full effects of such drastic actions have yet to be studied. Independent researchers have found racism and harsh sentencing rates for crack possession have arguably had a worse impact on African Americans than the negative health effects of the drug itself.
Joe Biden has claimed this bill did not generate mass incarceration, and he’s correct. What it did was help maintain mass incarceration caused by the other laws he either supported or wrote himself in the midst of the Crack era the decade prior.
As the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s and early ’90s, it was Joe Biden that helped change a rehabilitative criminal justice system into a punitive one. This included measures that enacted more incarceration, more prisons, and tougher sentences for drug offenses, particularly crack cocaine. The Comprehensive Control Act expanded federal drug trafficking penalties and civil asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize and absorb someone’s property even without proving guilt. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 made mandatory minimum federal sentences for selling or possessing crack 100 times stricter than for cocaine and the latter strengthened those sentences. As a result, the total prison population doubled in the following 10 years.
In the 80s, Black men were being incarcerated for crack-related offenses that white people arrested for cocaine-related offenses weren’t even being sentenced for. Whether it was a mistake in hindsight, the reality is that legislators attached the harsh sentences to the cocaine product that had conveniently flooded black communities. As an example, in 2003, Black Americans made up 80% of crack offense arrests even though 66% of crack users are White or Hispanic. Decades later, the opioid crisis has again tasked lawmakers with the creation of legislation to curb drug abuse. This specific drug use is now called Untreated Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and they’ve labeled it as a chronic brain disease. The emphasis is on repairing the serious cost to people, their families, and society. The message is one of understanding and compassion. On Capitol Hill, there is no consensus on why the federal government’s response to opioids is so different from the crack epidemic that preceded it, and so the damage remains unrepaired. There have been minor changes in revising the sentencing guidelines set during the crack era, but overall, whether they will change these notoriously biased laws remains unclear. What’s not unclear are the undeniable differences in media and governmental response when comparing the Crack epidemic to the Opioid epidemic and the results inevitably will be drastically different.
There’s no blueprint for a healthy community, but there are impossible odds that can make one far-fetched. By the time crack arrived, society had already failed to enable Black children to achieve the American Dream. Engaging in damaging behaviors was a simple transition. These young men, who may have fallen into the trap at 16, were being locked in cells until they were in their 40s. There were no rehabilitative programs inside, and no help outside once they released. Whole families couldn’t manifest. Our government made sure they were locked up and/or ignored as they battled the most addictive substance of its time. The media demonized for both outcomes. Those broken families make up communities today. Drug addicted, so-called “Crack babies” were born, demonized, then forgotten. Both the crack babies and the children of the crack era are still here. They are the ones shooting each other in the “underserved” communities Biden’s administration continues to ride to their political victories. That is exactly what unresolved “group trauma” looks like. Ignoring such outcomes so far has helped nothing. The means to do it ourselves seems appropriate.
Restorative payments are high on the list of priorities for the Biden administration. Distribution of financial reparations to LGBTQ people for marriage benefits denied before legalization is currently being distributed. They have given 32 Billion dollars to Tribal and Native communities to make up for past indiscretions. They’re also working out reparation payments of up to one million dollars per family for Mexican citizens that were separated at the border. In 2018, the Federal government spent 4.5 billion dollars combatting the opioid epidemic. Critics claim even that wasn’t nearly enough. So what should the government contribute for damage done to Black communities now that we can easily identify it by looking at the contrasting responses to the crack epidemic? According to the public response to the crack pipe “harm-reduction” meme, 30 Million dollars is too much and again we’re reminded public perception hasn’t changed.
Joe Biden once paced the senate floor explaining how it didn’t matter that the government made the criminals, or that poverty played a part, or racism. If these predators were out to hurt one of “them”, the only response is to “lock the sons of bitches up” and throw away the key. During the past few years, there have been small pockets of sporadic awareness and maybe even a reckoning for America’s special brand of racism. President Biden has done little to reveal himself as an invested leader. These were moments he could have used to teach, learn, and offer understanding and humility. People are different, and the way they receive truth will vary, as will the way they react to the knowledge. A powerful leader faces this head-on. It seems like he’s more content with racial division overall, which I’ve witnessed more of during his presidency than during any other time in my life. Pertaining to his role in the crack era, he seems more comfortable pretending this era didn’t affect an entire group of people. Maybe this is because he understands his hand in it, or maybe he genuinely doesn’t care. His lack of attention pushes me towards the latter. It wouldn’t cost a thing to exonerate Black folks from perceptions related to “crack”, “crack heads” and “crack babies”. To publicly forgive mistakes that were made when there were no options. For being human.
Repairing communities perfectly fits the perception of Biden’s administration, but it falls short in reality. They look more and more like another office full of noise but devoid of light. The policy they push doesn’t actually fit the lives we live, while legislation that could actually make a difference never even makes it off the house floor. HR40 is an example. It would simply form a commission to study the effects of racism on the Black community. However it’s being completely ignored, while our representatives scream about voting rights. From where I stand, down here with the people, no one has trouble voting. There is difficulty finding someone worth voting for; I will not call that suppression. I also don’t know a single person who actually asked anyone to remove statues, Dr. Seuss, Aunt Jemima, or freeways. Everyone I know understands that removing racist icons doesn’t actually remove racism, and all of that mess does nothing to change the world. How can it look like anything other than what it is? At face value, we’re being thrown holidays and iconic quarters to celebrate freedom when critical minds know we’ve yet to achieve this mythical state of being. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, not only does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world; every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on earth.
In neighborhoods rebuilt after the crack era, we see what becomes when time and space are neglected. For thriving, healthy communities, we would have required the same support and enthusiasm for repair as there was for their destruction. In America, that’s an anomaly, not a norm. Luckily, most of us understand the kind of chaos we experienced doesn’t do well inside young minds. Losing friends, police raids, guns, and death rarely lead to excelling at school and the planning of a successful life path. Before long, there’s too much distance between trauma and who we were supposed to be. To bring stability, compassionate intervention is necessary. An example, again, is how today’s opioid addiction is being nurtured. Yet, my entire generation had to work it out ourselves. Thankfully, though not without victims, somehow we realized the future despair wasn’t worth it. The fatherless children of the crack era all understand how it happened, though they may never understand why. That is one area where emptiness remains. We miss our brothers and mothers also. We wonder what might have been.
Joe Biden’s administration and political affiliates often throw us big words and bright colors. These things make for a virtuous theatre performance. They also serve to distract the masses. The beleif is that we are happy celebrating Juneteenth and Hip Hop and many will do just that. The rest of us sit back and watch the show, wondering if the equity everyone’s talking is a real real thing or just another pipe dream.
