John McWhorter, a moderate-conservative commentator in New York, argues that legalizing drugs is the only path to a new Black America: "The end of the War on Drugs is, in fact, what all people genuinely concerned with black uplift should be focused on, which is why I am devoting my last TNR [The New Republic] post of 2010 to the issue. The black malaise in the U.S. is currently like a card house; the Drug War is a single card which, if pulled out, would collapse the whole thing. That is neither an exaggeration nor an oversimplification. It comes down to this: If there were no way to sell drugs on the street at a markup, then young black men who drift into this route would instead have to get legal work. They would. Those insisting that they would not have about as much faith in human persistence and ingenuity as those who thought women past their five-year welfare cap would wind up freezing on sidewalk grates."
He continues his commentary about ending the War On Drugs: "There would be a new black community in which all able-bodied men had legal work even in less well-off communities — i.e. what even poor black America was like before the '70s; this is no fantasy. Those who say that this could only happen with low-skill factory jobs available a bus ride away from all black neighborhoods would be, again, wrong. That explanation for black poverty is full of holes. Too many people of all colors of modest education manage to get by without taking a time machine to the 1940s, and after the War on Drugs black men would be no exception. And in this new black community, young black men, much less likely to wind up in prison cells or caskets, would be a constant presence — and thus stay in the lives of their children. The black male community would no longer include a massive segment of underskilled, drug-addicted ex-cons churning in and out by the thousands year after year, and thus black boys growing up in these communities would not see this life as a norm. They would grow up to get jobs, period."
More commentary from Mr. McWhorter: "And something else these boys would not grow up with is a bone-deep sense of the police — and thus whites — as an enemy. Because there would be no reason for the police to prowl through his neighborhood. Before long, the sense of blacks as America’s eternal poster children — generated from within the black community as well as from without — would fade away. Think about it."
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Why America Should Ride The Anti-Drug-War Wave
