Black Americans born in the early 1990s became politically involved when the Black Lives Matter movement disrupted the 2016 Democratic presidential primary and blamed the Democrats for the mass incarceration of African Americans.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 established federal laws against specific drugs. Powder cocaine was an illicit commodity among the affluent. Eventually crack emerged as a less expensive variant of cocaine, becoming popular in low-income neighborhoods, but the law did not distinguish between powder and crack.
During the early 1980s, the “crack epidemic” decimated inner-city neighborhoods.
In 1986, the Democratic Congress passed legislation imposing the same severe punishment for crimes involving 5 grams of crack as those involving 500 grams of powder. For the new Black activists, this differential treatment was the most visible example of systemic racism, which the Democratic Party needed to rectify.
When BLM activists disrupted a campaign rally for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, they got into a heated exchange with former President Bill Clinton. They blasted Clinton for supporting the discriminatory crack/powder sentencing laws and then accused him of accelerating the mass incarceration of poor Blacks by signing the 1994 crime bill.
Clinton told the new Black activists at the rally that the 1994 crime bill targeted gangs that were killing too many Black children. He said African American community leaders implored him to support the crime bill. Clinton assured the new Black activists that the 1994 crime bill resulted in a 25-year drop in crime and a 33-year low in murder rates. Clinton accused the new Black activists of defending the people who killed the lives that they said mattered.
Clinton urged the new Black activists to educate themselves and tell the truth about the 1994 crime bill, but the new Black activists relied on revisionist history, which taught them that the Democratic Party passed racist laws during the 1980s and 1990s to incarcerate more Black people than ever before in the country’s history, and when U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) retired the following year after 46 years in Congress, many of the new Black activists did not honor his legacy.
They accused him of being the primary initiator of mass incarceration.
When Rangel died this year at the age of 94, the media honored him as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, but the new Black activists praised his “evolution” from top advocate of the “war on drugs” to a leading proponent of reforming drug laws.
The idea that Rangel “evolved” implies that his initial stance was unsophisticated and he developed a more enlightened perspective. According to the new Black activists, since Rangel encouraged the Congressional Black Caucus to support the crack/powder sentencing disparity, which targeted poor Black people in the mid-1980s, Rangel was the “Black face of White supremacy,” and Rangel’s most important achievement was recognizing the racism behind the drug laws he supported and attempting to correct the harm he caused.
It’s worth noting that the new Black activists think “Black-on-Black crime” is a myth. Since the majority of crimes are intra-racial, and no one coined the term “White-on-White” to characterize criminal behavior in White neighborhoods, the new Black activists have argued that the phrase “Black-on-Black crime” is demeaning. They believe the phrase is based in American racism and is used to imply that Black people are more prone to criminality than other ethnic groups. (Actually, the term “Black-on-Black” came out of the riots in the 1960s. The police couldn’t respond to all incidents of property damage. So, if a crime was “Black-on-Black,” the police ignored it. The new Black activists incorrectly think the term focuses on the criminal, but it originated with Black victims not getting assistance from the police.)
The new Black activists’ belief that “Black-on-Black crime” is fiction prevents them from putting Rangel’s support for heavier crack penalties into proper historical context.
The “crack epidemic” was more than just a surge in drug use. The crack trade resulted in levels of violent crime that were not seen with powder cocaine. Assaults, robberies, and killings related to crack dealing disproportionately afflicted inner-city Black neighborhoods. Rangel backed heavier crack penalties because his constituents demanded them. The logic was that tougher punishments would deter individuals from dealing crack, resulting in fewer violent incidents, but their logic didn’t factor in how lucrative and addictive it was.
The new Black activists, who saw tougher crack penalties as the “new Jim Crow,” can now use their experience in the Covid-19 lockdowns to obtain a better understanding of the government’s response to the crack epidemic in the mid-1980s.
The Covid-19 pandemic spread a new virus that state governments had no expertise containing. State officials had to solve the problem in real time and were unconcerned about the long-term consequences of the lockdowns they implemented to stop the spread of the disease. The majority of Americans believed the states did the proper thing given the circumstances. The unintended consequences of the lockdowns in elementary education and small business closures were not fully apparent until the pandemic was over, at which point the same people who had supported the lockdowns claimed the states’ measures were excessive.
The government responded to both emergencies by reducing the immediate threat and then dealing with the ramifications of their policies.
When Rangel discovered the unintended consequence of the drug laws of the 1980s and 1990s, he worked to modify them; yet, Rangel did not “evolve” from the wrong position to the right position; he tackled a crisis in one period and a different problem in another.
Rangel adjusted to the challenges of each decade.
Hopefully, the new Black activists will be able to tell the truth whenever the honorable Charles Rangel is mentioned in the future.
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