Not everyone believes this, but my understanding is that declassified (CIA I think? been a while) documents support the assertion that parts of our government employed a strategy designed to disrupt black communities. This strategy involved flooding predominantly black neighborhoods with crack cocaine, and then letting addiction, crime, and incarceration take their course.
It worked really well.
And then add in policies over the years that have perversely incentivized splitting up households (much-needed aid not available depending on who lives in the home), too, which may have been well-intentioned but proved very damaging to communities.
And we should also not forget - when comparing poverty outcomes between black and Latino Americans - these groups did not start from equivalent points. The practice of slavery did lasting, massive damage to the black community in the US - it’s basically impossible to extract present outcomes from that history. Far too much trauma.
Behind the Bastards did an early episode on it, I think the takeaway was that there isn’t some memo where Reagan cackles while saying he’s going to do it for these reasons, but there sure were a lot of CIA programs that actively encouraged cocaine and heroin being imported into the US while the drug war revved up simultaneously and AIDs got ignored, so one can certainly see how it sure looks like there was a massive government conspiracy to destroy black communities.
I haven’t heard that one, but they did like a crossover a year or two back with the Hood Politics podcast I believe that was a multi episode deep dive into the topic. Given how few details I apparently remember, probably worth a re-listen for me too, but you oughta give it a whirl!
Not everyone believes this, but my understanding is that declassified (CIA I think? been a while) documents support the assertion that parts of our government employed a strategy designed to disrupt black communities. This strategy involved flooding predominantly black neighborhoods with crack cocaine, and then letting addiction, crime, and incarceration take their course.
It worked really well.
And then add in policies over the years that have perversely incentivized splitting up households (much-needed aid not available depending on who lives in the home), too, which may have been well-intentioned but proved very damaging to communities.
And we should also not forget - when comparing poverty outcomes between black and Latino Americans - these groups did not start from equivalent points. The practice of slavery did lasting, massive damage to the black community in the US - it’s basically impossible to extract present outcomes from that history. Far too much trauma.
Behind the Bastards did an early episode on it, I think the takeaway was that there isn’t some memo where Reagan cackles while saying he’s going to do it for these reasons, but there sure were a lot of CIA programs that actively encouraged cocaine and heroin being imported into the US while the drug war revved up simultaneously and AIDs got ignored, so one can certainly see how it sure looks like there was a massive government conspiracy to destroy black communities.
I haven’t heard that one, but they did like a crossover a year or two back with the Hood Politics podcast I believe that was a multi episode deep dive into the topic. Given how few details I apparently remember, probably worth a re-listen for me too, but you oughta give it a whirl!