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Thursday, Oct. 31
The Indiana Daily Student

The racism of marijuana prohibition

A Huffington Post article drew me in with the headline, “How racist is marijuana prohibition in your state?”

And apparently for Indiana, it’s pretty racist.

In fact, pretty much the entire country is. The American Civil Liberties Union has released a new tool that lets users see how race is tied to marijuana arrests throughout the country.

In Indiana, for example, someone is arrested every .68 hours for having marijuana, and black people are 3.39 times more likely to be arrested than white people, according to data from a 2010 ACLU report.

The fact is, black people are not more likely to smoke pot than white people, and yet they are almost four times more likely to be arrested for it in the United States as a whole.  

Weed legalization buzz has grown rapidly. Though we often think of legalized marijuana supporters as dreadlocked hippies, there is a more compelling argument to legalize weed.

With the way the system currently stands, we are essentially funding racial profiling.

The racial problem with marijuana is just one example of racial disparities within our criminal justice system. Nobody seems to be talking about the fact that our image of a criminal is almost always a black man, the guy we think is “creepy” or “suspicious” is black. Out of the 2.3 million incarcerated in the United States today, one million of them are black.

Though many are apt to point fingers at the “cultural problem” of the inner-city and the black population — looking at you, Paul Ryan — that excuse attempts to place our country’s race problem in the abstract rather than taking personal responsibility and acknowledging our stereotypes and our own cultural problem.

There are racial disparities with every type of drug sentencing. Overall, five times as many white people use drugs as black people, but blacks are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites.

No one sat me down and told me not to trust black people when I was a child, but I still grew up believing that I should be more wary if a black stranger approached me than if a white one did. I grew up qualifying my statements, where “a big black guy” carried more significance than “a big white guy.”

Our race problem is everywhere. It’s in our local law enforcement, our entire court system and within our social fabric — a stubborn stain we can’t get rid of and which we have stopped scrubbing.

The racial disparities in marijuana arrests are indicative of the problems of law enforcement and society as a whole. When black people receive the brunt of punishment for a crime that whites commit just as often, it is clear that unbiased judgment gives way to racial profiling.

Marijuana legalization isn’t likely to cure our racial tensions. But it would save Indiana millions of dollars and ensure that our criminal justice system is not so blatantly racist.

And if you’re not from Indiana, just check out how blatantly racist your home state is.

cjellert@indiana.edu
@cjellert

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