As you look over these words, the United Nations World Conference Against Racism is underway in Durban, South Africa.
Hopefully the magnitude of this conference is a growing reflection of a movement to create world partnerships to address and deal with racism in all its 21st century manifestations.
While pondering the themes of the conference, I couldn't help but stop and think about how the "war on drugs" will no doubt be a serious example of contemporary racism in this country, and its clear and present devastation throughout the Americas.
The "war on drugs" is a phrase popularized during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. This phrase is supposed to revive our confidence in a greed-governed system that cannot deny that the CIA sold drugs and arms to fund the Sandinista-Contra war in Nicaragua.
We are supposed to be soothed into believing that we are truly at war with drugs. The Centers for Disease Control, however, will tell you, as will paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, that "the two most dangerous and life-destroying substances by far, alcohol and tobacco, . (are) advertised in neon on every street corner in urban America."
The "war on drugs" is proving itself to be a "war on people and all communities," or as some aptly put it a "U.S. Apartheid."
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According to The Sentencing Project, ever since this "war on drugs" began, U.S. arrests are up 447 percent.
With only 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. gained its own World Wrestling Federation belt for being the world's largest incarcerator, holding 25 percent of the world's prisoners.
Incredibly, while Anglo and African Americans now use drugs at almost exactly the same rates, and the United States has five times as many Anglos as African American, African Americans are forced to state prisons at a rate 13.4 times higher than Anglos.
Even more incredible, the July 1998 issue of American Psychologist reported that the present U.S. incarceration rates of African Americans is equivalent to four times the incarceration rate of South Africans during Apartheid.
When you look at how lucrative stock market shares are going nowadays for the growing prison industry, such as the building and maintenance of private prisons, you have question how can anybody be getting rich from the incarceration of another.
This sounds viciously familiar to those history classes I was awake for. This struck home when it was reported that 31 percent, of more than 200,000, of all African-American men in the state of Florida were actually barred from casting their vote in the recent presidential elections.
This would have undoubtedly given Al Gore the state, and the presidency. Furthermore, the Human Rights Watch reported that 13 percent, or 1.4 million, of all African Americans are disenfranchised for life in the U.S., mostly due to minor drug offenses.
This also sounds vaguely familiar.
I hope that we will become more critical students and human beings about what is going on around us in order to better our collective future. In case you're wondering why I cite so many percentages, it is the whole shape that counts.
Next time the subject of the "war on drugs" comes up, speak about our relationship with cigarettes and alcohol, as well as our social and political relationships. Then find out what the "war on drugs" means to the people and environment of Columbia.
What can an incarcerated country do to help another country seeking its own economic freedom, sovereignty and expression?
Questions, comments or suggestions can be sent to Maceo Carrillo Martinet at conuco8@unm.edu.
