White people use drugs at higher rates than black people, but black people are convicted at higher rates for drug possession.
Additionally, it's easier for someone in the upper middle class to legally have the same behavior that would give a lower class person a felony. Case in point, nearly all of the stay at home moms in the upper class neighborhood I grew up in were barred out on Xanax all day. They just all knew the doctor that'd write scripts no questions asked but didn't take insurance, only cash. Lower class can't access that 'doctor'.
Indeed, the person could be less likely. From what I've read, affluent whites have the highest rates of illegal drug use, but the police direct their enforcement efforts towards blacks.
I'm curious on what evidence you base the statement "white people are more likely to have drugs on them than black people." When controlling for socioeconomic status I would expect no difference by race, and honestly when controlling for socioeconomic status I would only expect which drugs were found to change, and not necessarily the rate at which they were found.
Neither drug use nor drug selling is greater among black people than among white people in the U.S. But arrests, convictions, and jail time are all much greater for black Americans -- at every level, more arrests, higher percentage of those arrested convicted, longer sentences for those convicted.
There is nothing wrong with the 'culture' of Black people in America that ending white supremacy can't fix.
Middle class black people often get harassed by police, and there is a long history of far steeper sentences for convictions for drugs used more by the black population (crack) than that used more by the white population (cocaine).
So unequal treatment based on race has quite literally been a feature of the US justice system, independent of socioeconomic status.
Without providing a reference backing up your second sentence your claim is no more believable than the OP's.
The reason I mention it is that on average black people tend to be poorer and live in worse neighborhoods, and poor people in bad neighborhoods (of all races) tend to do more drugs. So my expectation would be black people tend to do more drugs than white people, but I still doubt it's enough of a difference to explain the difference in prison population.
Edit: Just to be clear before I'm downvoted into oblivion, I agree that the police and justice system are heavily biased against black people, I'm just not sure that sentence is true.
> Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like crack cocaine
This raises a question about why drugs that whites are more likely to use are penalized less severely than drugs that blacks are more likely to use.
I'm not sure what the data looks like for your reference on black vs. white drug use since the original data isn't there.
Some data indicates there is a 23% higher level of drug use among blacks than whites [1, Table 1.19B]. That would explain _some_ of the higher arrest rates of blacks for drug crimes.
Black people are more likely to be convicted of drug crimes even when they use drugs at the same rates as white people. Similar for traffic crimes.
Many crimes are poverty-related theft for subsistence, which rich people never need to be tempted with (as they get handouts from their parents) aren't particularly relevant if someone gets a job that eliminates poverty. And childhood poverty is correlated to race.
So yeah, screening by criminal record is intertwined with structural racism.
I don't buy the argument that rich black kids commit crimes at higher rates. White and black people smoke weed at roughly the same rates, yet black people are far, far, far more likely to be prosecuted for it.
Drug use is consistently found to be about equal between White and Black Americans, or higher among White Americans. Yet arrests and sentences for drug use are far more frequent for Black Americans than for White Americans, presumably because higher policing.
Wherever you drive in America you will find drug abuse. But if you focus on any one area that leads to more arrests there, increasing their crime stats, leading to more policing, leading to more drug arrests, ...
The vast majority of people in prison for drug offenses are in there for dealing, not using. So the point about blacks and whites using at the same rate is a red herring.
I am a black person in America and I think you're half right.
White people and black people use illegal drugs at approximately the same rate. Black people, despite being a population only 1/4 the size of the white population, are arrested for drug crimes in both greater numbers and in greater proportion.
Into my mid-to-late 30s, when I would get pulled over by the police, roughly half of the time, the officer would ask me if I had any drugs in my car. My response was usually "No more than you do, officer". The police profile and harass us. There are even rogue officers who plant evidence to manufacture crimes.
We all know this. As a result, many of us are more staunchly against even casual drug use in our personal lives.
It's not fair. It's not right. It's just the way it is.
I have a friend whom I have known since childhood who is currently serving 20 years in a federal prison for marijuana related offenses. He made a choice and it turned out poorly for him.
I'll save my outrage for the people who were falsely convicted. I'll save my outrage for the victims of planted evidence and corrupt cops.
If someone is actually guilty of the crime, their case is far less sympathetic.
>White and black people report using drugs at similar rates, according to the latest data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
>A 2009 report from Human Rights Watch found black people are much more likely to be arrested for drugs. In 2007, black people were 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for drugs than white people.
>Human Rights Watch found more than four in five arrests in the war on drugs are for mere possession, while the rest are for sales. That suggests police are targeting drug users, not traffickers.
>For every 10,000 residents, about 3,400 more black people are stopped than whites, and 360 more Latinos are stopped than whites. Stopped blacks are 127% more likely to be frisked -- and stopped Latinos are 43% more likely to be frisked -- than stopped whites.
>Now consider this: Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband.
In fact, white are more likely than blacks to deal drugs [0]:
"Whites were about 45 percent more likely than blacks to sell drugs in 1980, according to an analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by economist Robert Fairlie. This was consistent with a 1989 survey of youth in Boston. My own analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32 percent difference)."
Additionally, it's easier for someone in the upper middle class to legally have the same behavior that would give a lower class person a felony. Case in point, nearly all of the stay at home moms in the upper class neighborhood I grew up in were barred out on Xanax all day. They just all knew the doctor that'd write scripts no questions asked but didn't take insurance, only cash. Lower class can't access that 'doctor'.
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