Thread: President Trump and the Black vote

Originally Posted by jtdc

So what should the be treated like?

Like the valued Americans they have always been.

They should not have to fight job discrimination in the work place. They should not be targets of the War on Drugs. They should not be trapped in no-job slave cabins in inner cities. They should not have to fight to protect their voting rights. They should not be at the bottom of the pay scale. They should not be at the bottom of per capita income or median household income. They should not be in poverty at twice the rate of whites. They should not have to fight an illegal alien or immigrant for a seat in college or for a job that can sustain them. They should not have to fight for schools without broken plumbing and leaky roofs. They shouldn't be gunned down in their own backyards because they have a cell phone. They shouldn't be subjects of these types of conversations because this should all be fixed by now and their struggles against race-based inequality and injustice should be over.

And I believe Trump will be the one to finally fix it. I sure hope so anyway.

Originally Posted by Judy

Like the valued Americans they have always been.

Boomslang apparently doesn't believe that!

"They should not have to fight job discrimination in the work place." Nobody should, but just like with women, they can't just be given a job that they aren't suited for to meet some politically correct scheme.

"They should not be targets of the War on Drugs." Just let the problem solve itself?

"They should not be trapped in no-job slave cabins in inner cities." In Orange County, CA, they are going back and forth with what to do with homeless encampments. Do we just do away with the inner cities? I grew up in the suburbs. I can't envision the inner city being a healthy environment to grow up in.

"They should not have to fight to protect their voting rights." You buy into that belief that legal people can't vote?

"They should not be at the bottom of the pay scale. They should not be at the bottom of per capita income or median household income." We've had discriminatory laws trying for years to undo that imbalance with no luck.

"They should not be in poverty at twice the rate of whites." So socialism is the answer?

"They should not have to fight an illegal alien or immigrant for a seat in college or for a job that can sustain them." No American should!

"They should not have to fight for schools without broken plumbing and leaky roofs." Unfortunately, much of what I have seen is they will reduce it to that!

"They shouldn't be gunned down in their own backyards because they have a cell phone." Unfortunately, when the police say "halt", they should halt. I don't want to get into that incident because the information I have seen, the police were not justified in shooting.

"They shouldn't be subjects of these types of conversations because this should all be fixed by now and their struggles against race-based inequality and injustice should be over." But it is not, so we are!

"And I believe Trump will be the one to finally fix it. I sure hope so anyway." I hope you are right! But Boonslang doesn't think so.

PS: It amazes me that you were able to get all of that out of the one sentence that boomslang wrote.

Originally Posted by jtdc

Boomslang apparently doesn't believe that!

"They should not have to fight job discrimination in the work place." Nobody should, but just like with women, they can't just be given a job that they aren't suited for to meet some politically correct scheme.

"They should not be targets of the War on Drugs." Just let the problem solve itself?

"They should not be trapped in no-job slave cabins in inner cities." In Orange County, CA, they are going back and forth with what to do with homeless encampments. Do we just do away with the inner cities? I grew up in the suburbs. I can't envision the inner city being a healthy environment to grow up in.

"They should not have to fight to protect their voting rights." You buy into that belief that legal people can't vote?

"They should not be at the bottom of the pay scale. They should not be at the bottom of per capita income or median household income." We've had discriminatory laws trying for years to undo that imbalance with no luck.

"They should not be in poverty at twice the rate of whites." So socialism is the answer?

"They should not have to fight an illegal alien or immigrant for a seat in college or for a job that can sustain them." No American should!

"They should not have to fight for schools without broken plumbing and leaky roofs." Unfortunately, much of what I have seen is they will reduce it to that!

"They shouldn't be gunned down in their own backyards because they have a cell phone." Unfortunately, when the police say "halt", they should halt. I don't want to get into that incident because the information I have seen, the police were not justified in shooting.

"They shouldn't be subjects of these types of conversations because this should all be fixed by now and their struggles against race-based inequality and injustice should be over." But it is not, so we are!

"And I believe Trump will be the one to finally fix it. I sure hope so anyway." I hope you are right! But Boonslang doesn't think so.

PS: It amazes me that you were able to get all of that out of the one sentence that boomslang wrote.

Why would black Americans and women not be suited for jobs?!!! You are concerned with a fallacy. Sure, there may be some physical work that some women aren't suited for due to lack of strength, but that would not apply to black men. Otherwise, I can't think of any job that blacks wouldn't be "suited for".

Black Americans use drugs at the same rates as whites and in fact in certain groups like pregnant women use them less. So why are our prisons filled with black Americans on non-violent drug charges 6 to 1 compared to whites? The War on Drugs turned out to be a race war. That's why our prisons are full of blacks and the drug business grows steadily each year completely unimpeded. That's why we need to end the War on Drugs, legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate.

Your environment in Orange County may leave you with a void about black people, because practically speaking, there aren't many blacks in California. In fact, California while our largest state has a very small black population. California's black population is 6.5%, less than HALF the national rate of 13.5%. California's Hispanic and Latino population is 39%. Your Asian population is 14.8%. These two minority groups comprise a majority of your state mostly from legal and illegal immigration. Those are discriminatory numbers, meaning the majority of your state deliberately deploys racist practices with population growth from groups hostile to blacks, a fact we know, to limit black American normal development in California, which shuts them out of equal opportunity access to the world's 6th largest economy of California. Ironic that our most "liberal" blue state is without question our most racist state against black Americans.

I believe that when you allow illegal aliens and immigrants to vote you are canceling out the vote of all Americans, including black Americans, but in order to fix that, it creates new issues for a lot of Americans, including if not especially for black Americans.

No, our anti-discrimination laws that were supposed to be passed to protect the rights of black Americans, were diverted to Hispanics and other minority groups. That sad state of affairs is no better exemplified than in the state of California. Hispanics are Caucasian. Using anti-race discrimination laws for any Caucasian, let alone hordes of them, is why the programs have had "no luck".

No socialism is not the answer. Socialism isn't even the request. Black Americans have never asked for socialism. That's the immigrants from socialist seeking countries who asked for that. Black Americans have never been the ones asking for something for nothing. When policies stole their jobs and handed them out to illegal aliens and Caucasian immigrants, socialism was all that left for many of them. It should also be noted that 2/3 of all poverty-spending in the US is paid to or paid on behalf of white people and I can't wait to them off of welfare.

Correct. No American should compete with an illegal alien or excess legal immigrant for anything.

You have seen black Americans break the plumbing and tear up the roofs of their schools?!!! Fascinating, please do tell me more!

Correct, and from what I've seen, none of these shootings of the unarmed were justified. Yet no one has gone to jail, because the juries or judge issued acquittals. Refusing to "halt" shouldn't give a police officer the right to kill you, and I don't think it does. Yet, it happens a lot, especially to black Americans. That's a wanton disregard for the lives.

Correct. It is not over, so we are still talking about it. SAD!!

Trump is going to fix it from the ground up. Get the illegal aliens out of here, reduce legal immigration, bring our jobs back, deregulate and cut taxes to make them want to come back and stay here, fix our bad trade deals so our own industries with the good jobs and benefits can grow which together with the reduction in immigration levels will generate millions of good jobs for Americans, including black Americans which improves their lives and futures, solves housing and survival issues, reduces forced dependency on welfare programs, opens up seats in colleges and universities, removes illegal aliens from our public school system which opens up attention and priority for American Kids including black Americans, makes more money available for better smaller schools which with all the jobs available at the end of graduation from high school provides incentive and motivation to do well in school so they can get a good job after graduation or go on to college, depending on what they want to do.

Trump's got this. And he will fix it, with black votes or without. It would be nice for more black Americans to support him, but it's okay if they don't. It will happen either way, it would just be easier for him to achieve more with their support. But it's their choice.

We're in a very exciting time in our country! We're fixing it!

Judy wrote (excerpt):

Black Americans use drugs at the same rates as whites and in fact in certain groups like pregnant women use them less. So why are our prisons filled with black Americans on non-violent drug charges 6 to 1 compared to whites? The War on Drugs turned out to be a race war. That's why our prisons are full of blacks and the drug business grows steadily each year completely unimpeded. That's why we need to end the War on Drugs, legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate.

Race and Drug Arrests: Another Big Lie




How often have you heard that blacks use illegal drugs at the same rate as whites but are arrested far more often for using them? This is supposed to prove that the police are hopelessly racist.

The ACLU gets very excited about this. Former Executive Director Ira Glasser said drug laws are “a system of separating out, subjugating, imprisoning, and destroying substantial portions of a population based on skin color.” Sounds bad.

So what are the facts? The US Department of Health and Human Services does regular surveys, and asks people if they take illegal drugs. Blacks are only about 10 to 20 percent more likely than whites to say that they do.

But if you look at the arrest data, blacks are 2-1/2 times more likely to be arrested for drug possession and 3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for trafficking. So, is this proof of police discrimination?

If it were, it would be an aberration. In the case of violent crime–rape, robbery, assault–we know that the reason police arrest blacks more often than whites is because blacks are more likely to commit these crimes. We know that because the Justice Department does huge surveys of crime victims and asks them what race the perp was.

About half of all robbery victims, for example, say the robber was black and–sure enough–about half the robbers police arrest are black. The same is true for other violent crimes: Police are more likely to arrest blacks because blacks are more likely to be criminals.

So, do police suddenly go nuts if drugs are involved? If that’s so, there must be a lot of nutty black police officers. Take Washington, DC. Ever since it got home rule in 1975, every mayor in DC has been black. Two thirds of the police officers are black. And yet, the ACLU itself reports that in 2010 a black DC resident was 8 times more likely than a white resident to be arrested for marijuana possession. Was that racist police–racist black police–or just more black dope smokers?

Actually, it’s possible for blacks to be no more likely than whites to use drugs but still get arrested more often for using them, even by scrupulously race-neutral police. That’s because blacks commit so many other crimes. If a black is arrested for robbery–and blacks are about eight times more likely than whites to be arrested for robbery–the police search him for drugs. If they find drugs they charge him with possession in addition to robbery. If he hadn’t got caught for robbery–or assault or murder or whatever it was–he probably would not have gotten that drug charge.

As I said earlier, the idea that blacks don’t use illegal drugs much more often than whites comes from surveys. But when you ask people if they take illegal drugs do they tell the truth?

As it turns out, there is scholarly literature on this. Researchers ask people if they have taken drugs and then take urine or hair samples to find out. And almost every time, blacks are a lot more likely than whites to say they haven’t taken drugs but the test then proves they were lying.

A 2005 study in the Journal of Urban Health, for example, found that blacks were ten times more likely than whites to lie about cocaine. Hispanics were five times more likely. When it came to marijuana, not one of the 109 whites in the sample lied, but one in eight of the 191 blacks lied.

A 2008 study of Vietnam-era veterans in the journal Addictive Behaviors found that blacks were more than 20 times more likely than whites to lie about cocaine, and twice as likely to lie about marijuana.

A 2003 report also in Addictive Behaviors surveyed 290 black men who were being treated for high blood pressure. Only 48 admitted they were using illegal drugs but urine tests found that 131 of them were. Forty-five percent were taking drugs but only 19 percent admitted it. This behavior goes back a long way. In 1994, more than 20 years ago, a large study of young people, aged nine to 20, found that blacks were six times more likely than whites to claim they didn’t use cocaine–but have it show up in a urine test.

The Journal of Urban Health article I quoted earlier says this, and I quote: “the results replicate and extend a growing body of research suggesting that African Americans underreport substance use on surveys.” Underreport is a nice way of saying that they lie about it.

So, does this prove that there is no bias in drug arrests? Not necessarily. The samples in these studies are limited, and occasionally, the results go the other way.

One 2001 study found that when people arrested for various crimes were asked about drug use and then tested, whites were more likely than blacks to lie about crack cocaine–but less likely to lie about marijuana or methamphetamines.

In general, though, it seems that blacks are a lot more likely than whites to take drugs and then claim they don’t.

But there’s a better way to tell which groups are more likely to use illegal drugs. Every year, the US Department of Health and Human Services tells us how many people went to the emergency room because they took an illegal drug and got sick or went crazy. Since the government tabulates these numbers by race, we can calculate rates. Blacks are 3-1/2 times more likely than whites to go to the emergency room because they took an illegal drug. They are 2.8 times more likely than whites to end up in the ER because of marijuana, and seven times more likely because they took cocaine.

It doesn’t seem likely that blacks just freak out more when they take drugs, but if that’s the case, that would help explain high arrest rates, too: People who are so high they have to go the ER are probably doing things that attract the attention of the police.

Some people might say that white people with drug problems go to fancy private clinics instead of the ER. Doesn’t’ work that way. You go to detox for weeks at a time, by appointment. If you just show up blithering they’ll send you to the ER.

So, the ACLU is wrong. First, it appears that blacks do use illegal drugs more often than whites, but lie about it. And there’s no question they get picked up a lot more for other crimes and if they have drugs on them they’re charged with possession. Finally, they’re 3-1/2 times more likely than whites to end up in the ER because they took illegal drugs.

It looks to me that, as usual, police are just arresting the people who break the law.

So, can we lay to rest this idea of racist police? Apparently not. Just last week, the University of California Student Association–representing the state’s 233,000 college students–voted to urge the university system financially to divest from the United States. I’ll quote you one of the reasons: “racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement agencies, particularly for drug-related offences.”

The myth lives on. We have a lot of work to do. Thanks for watching.

https://www.amren.com/archives/video...other-big-lie/

Judy wrote (excerpt):

Correct, and from what I've seen, none of these shootings of the unarmed were justified. Yet no one has gone to jail, because the juries or judge issued acquittals. Refusing to "halt" shouldn't give a police officer the right to kill you, and I don't think it does. Yet, it happens a lot, especially to black Americans. That's a wanton disregard for the lives.

5 Statistics You Need To Know About Cops Killing Blacks

AP Photo/Cliff Owen

ByAARON BANDLER
July 7, 2016

The Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings have caused an uproar among leftists because they fuel their narrative that racist white police officers are hunting down innocent black men. But the statistics – brought to light by the superb work of Heather Mac Donald – tell a different story.

Here are five key statistics you need to know about cops killing blacks.

1. Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or "were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force," according to Mac Donald in a speech at Hillsdale College.

Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population. But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.

"Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force," writes MacDonald.

MacDonald also pointed out in her Hillsdale speech that blacks "commit 75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime" in New York City, even though they consist of 23 percent of the city's population.

"The black violent crime rate would actually predict that more than 26 percent of police victims would be black," MacDonald said. "Officer use of force will occur where the police interact most often with violent criminals, armed suspects, and those resisting arrest, and that is in black neighborhoods."

2. More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. According to Mac Donald, 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only four percent of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers.

"If we’re going to have a 'Lives Matter' anti-police movement, it would be more appropriately named "White and Hispanic Lives Matter,'" said Mac Donald in her Hillsdale speech.

3. The Post's data does show that unarmed black men are more likely to die by the gun of a cop than an unarmed white man...but this does not tell the whole story. In August 2015, the ratio was seven-to-one of unarmed black men dying from police gunshots compared to unarmed white men; the ratio was six-to-one by the end of 2015. But Mac Donald points out in The Marshall Project that looking at the details of the actual incidents that occurred paints a different picture:

The “unarmed” label is literally accurate, but it frequently fails to convey highly-charged policing situations. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for lack of trying. At least five black victims had reportedly tried to grab the officer’s gun, or had been beating the cop with his own equipment. Some were shot from an accidental discharge triggered by their own assault on the officer. And two individuals included in the Post’s “unarmed black victims” category were struck by stray bullets aimed at someone else in justified cop shootings. If the victims were not the intended targets, then racism could have played no role in their deaths.

In one of those unintended cases, an undercover cop from the New York Police Department was conducting a gun sting in Mount Vernon, just north of New York City. One of the gun traffickers jumped into the cop’s car, stuck a pistol to his head, grabbed $2,400 and fled. The officer gave chase and opened fire after the thief again pointed his gun at him. Two of the officer’s bullets accidentally hit a 61-year-old bystander, killing him. That older man happened to be black, but his race had nothing to do with his tragic death. In the other collateral damage case, Virginia Beach, Virginia, officers approached a car parked at a convenience store that had a homicide suspect in the passenger seat. The suspect opened fire, sending a bullet through an officer’s shirt. The cops returned fire, killing their assailant as well as a woman in the driver’s seat. That woman entered the Post’s database without qualification as an “unarmed black victim” of police fire.

Mac Donald examines a number of other instances, including unarmed black men in San Diego, CA and Prince George's County, MD attempting to reach for a gun in a police officer's holster. In the San Diego case, the unarmed black man actually "jumped the officer" and assaulted him, and the cop shot the man since he was "fearing for his life." MacDonald also notes that there was an instance in 2015 where "three officers were killed with their own guns, which the suspects had wrestled from them."

4. Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 about the Philadelphia Police Department, and is further confirmed that by a study conducted University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway in 2015 that determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene.

5. Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to Mac Donald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person.

Despite the facts, the anti-police rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and their leftist sympathizers have resulted in what Mac Donald calls the "Ferguson Effect," as murders have spiked by 17 percent among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. as a result of cops being more reluctant to police neighborhoods out of fear of being labeled as racists. Additionally, there have been over twice as many cops victimized by fatal shootings in the first three months of 2016.

Anti-police rhetoric has deadly consequences.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/...-aaron-bandler

Does not matter the color of your skin, people use it as a crutch and an excuse for their poor choices in life to blame it on everybody but themselves.

We all have access to birth control, who we CHOOSE to hang around with, what TOXIC people we choose to not have in our life. WE choose who are partners will be.

We have access to schools, libraries, Churches, join the Military, volunteer, make responsible choices in life, wait to have a family you can afford and get out of poverty. We are free to move all over this beautiful country. We are free to apply for jobs in every State.

It is up to each and every one of us what we do with those choices. What path to take. Pay attention in school or squander that opportunity? Utilize the library, read books and learn? Take on-line courses? Surround yourself around positive people? Start working at a young age, learn responsibility?

Our attitudes and our minds are the only road blocks to prosperity and a good life in this country.

What should ANY American be treated like? How do they treat themselves and others? You get what you put in. Nothing more, nothing less.

Knock the chip off your shoulder, smile, have respect for our environment, yourself and others and move on...or do not.

We live in a free country, the choice is yours and yours alone.


EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD BE FIGHTING AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, REFUGEES, TPS, ASYLUM, LEGAL IMMIGRATION, WORK VISA'S AND PRESERVE OUR COUNTRY, OUR RESOURCES, OUR WATER, OUR LANDS, OUR HOUSING, OUR JOBS AND OUR QUALITY OF LIFE FOR OUR FUTURE, OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN'S FUTURES.

TO DO ANYTHING LESS WOULD BE A TOTAL DISSERVICE TO YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILY AND ALL THAT OUR FOUNDING FATHERS AND MILITARY FOUGHT FOR TO HAVE THIS GREAT COUNTRY. WE EARNED IT...THESE FOREIGN INVADERS DID NOT!

Originally Posted by Judy

Like the valued Americans they have always been.

They should not have to fight job discrimination in the work place. They should not be targets of the War on Drugs. They should not be trapped in no-job slave cabins in inner cities. They should not have to fight to protect their voting rights. They should not be at the bottom of the pay scale. They should not be at the bottom of per capita income or median household income. They should not be in poverty at twice the rate of whites. They should not have to fight an illegal alien or immigrant for a seat in college or for a job that can sustain them. They should not have to fight for schools without broken plumbing and leaky roofs. They shouldn't be gunned down in their own backyards because they have a cell phone. They shouldn't be subjects of these types of conversations because this should all be fixed by now and their struggles against race-based inequality and injustice should be over.

And I believe Trump will be the one to finally fix it. I sure hope so anyway.

Fiyah!

When I did my research on the War on Drugs a few years ago, there were 800,000 people in prisons in the US for non-violent drug charges and over 600,000 of them were black Americans. MW's article is based on the myth that black people lie on surveys more than white people, (UGH!), and blacks commit more crimes than whites and in the course of those crimes get charged with drug offenses more often, (UGH!), the racism in the War on Drugs was not based on police officers being racist, it was based on the whole anti-drug culture being racist.

The whole War on Drugs started out under the Nixon Administration as a well-intentioned effort to reduce drug use in the United States in an effort to improve people's lives. What Nixon didn't know nor would most Americans have any clue about, is that this was not the purpose of those promoting it, devising it, and legislating it.

The War on Drugs not only targets blacks for arrests, it targets them for charges, prosecutions, convictions and incarcerations. This gives them a felony and denies them the right to vote by other race-based legislation. Then came drug testing and background checks for employment. The cascading impact on the black community of the War on Drugs is the second single largest cause of why blacks have the lowest income per capita, lowest median household income, the highest poverty rates, and highest level of dependency on public supported welfare programs. The first cause of course is illegal immigration and massive excess legal immigration.

The War on Drugs is without any question a War on Blacks, so Republicans need to wake up, smell the crap, see it for what it really is as it turned out and end the War on Drugs. We need to legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate those who want or need help, and stop worrying about it, stop wasting money on it, and stop abusing one group of Americans to keep it alive and funded.

I don't blame police officers for this, because they patrol where they're told to patrol, they arrest and target who they're told to arrest and target, they testify at prosecutions when they're told to testify, and they haul the accused off to prison after judges and juries convict them. They are just following the orders the honchos in their cities gave them enforcing the laws passed by their state legislatures.

There is a great organization called LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Every serious Republican needs to visit this website, read their facts and figures, hear their interviews and experiences and better understand that the War on Drugs turned evil almost as soon as it went into effect and grew into a monster ever since.

Here's a link to their website. They also go around the country educating people about the reality of the War on Drugs. These are all law enforcement officers, judges, parole officers and others who worked most of their careers enforcing the War on Drugs. They know it inside and out because they saw it first-hand. Most Americans would not want something like this going on in our country if they knew the truth about it, because most Americans are not racists.

I hope Trump gets good information about our War on Drugs and does whatever he can to at least end the War on Drugs at the federal level, legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate, ensuring that any and all drug trade is domestic only, no imports or exports, and all workers and owners, growers, processors and sellers in the business are licensed US citizens. Then he can reassign DEA to the border to help enforce our immigration and trafficking laws.

LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) (Now Law Enforcement Action Partnership)

https://lawenforcementactionpartners...us/who-we-are/

Judy wrote (excerpt):

MW's article is based on the myth that black people lie on surveys more than white people, (UGH!), and blacks commit more crimes than whites and in the course of those crimes get charged with drug offenses more often, (UGH!)

How convenient. I noticed that you forget to include one very important fact. What you're calling a myth was in fact backed by statistical data from actual drug testing of those surveyed. Furthermore, considering more blacks are actually arrested for crimes, it stands to reason that many of them could also be charged with possession of a drug during the search process which would explain the number of drug arrests. Personally, I think some of your argument is full of holes and is lacking in actual data and statistical support.

As of 2016 the white population was 61.3%. Blacks were the largest minority group at 12.7% and Hispanics were the largest ethnic minority at 17.8%.

Originally Posted by Judy

When I did my research on the War on Drugs a few years ago, there were 800,000 people in prisons in the US for non-violent drug charges and over 600,000 of them were black Americans. MW's article is based on the myth that black people lie on surveys more than white people, (UGH!), and blacks commit more crimes than whites and in the course of those crimes get charged with drug offenses more often, (UGH!), the racism in the War on Drugs was not based on police officers being racist, it was based on the whole anti-drug culture being racist.

The whole War on Drugs started out under the Nixon Administration as a well-intentioned effort to reduce drug use in the United States in an effort to improve people's lives. What Nixon didn't know nor would most Americans have any clue about, is that this was not the purpose of those promoting it, devising it, and legislating it.

The War on Drugs not only targets blacks for arrests, it targets them for charges, prosecutions, convictions and incarcerations. This gives them a felony and denies them the right to vote by other race-based legislation. Then came drug testing and background checks for employment. The cascading impact on the black community of the War on Drugs is the second single largest cause of why blacks have the lowest income per capita, lowest median household income, the highest poverty rates, and highest level of dependency on public supported welfare programs. The first cause of course is illegal immigration and massive excess legal immigration.

The War on Drugs is without any question a War on Blacks, so Republicans need to wake up, smell the crap, see it for what it really is as it turned out and end the War on Drugs. We need to legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate those who want or need help, and stop worrying about it, stop wasting money on it, and stop abusing one group of Americans to keep it alive and funded.

I don't blame police officers for this, because they patrol where they're told to patrol, they arrest and target who they're told to arrest and target, they testify at prosecutions when they're told to testify, and they haul the accused off to prison after judges and juries convict them. They are just following the orders the honchos in their cities gave them enforcing the laws passed by their state legislatures.

There is a great organization called LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Every serious Republican needs to visit this website, read their facts and figures, hear their interviews and experiences and better understand that the War on Drugs turned evil almost as soon as it went into effect and grew into a monster ever since.

Here's a link to their website. They also go around the country educating people about the reality of the War on Drugs. These are all law enforcement officers, judges, parole officers and others who worked most of their careers enforcing the War on Drugs. They know it inside and out because they saw it first-hand. Most Americans would not want something like this going on in our country if they knew the truth about it, because most Americans are not racists.

I hope Trump gets good information about our War on Drugs and does whatever he can to at least end the War on Drugs at the federal level, legalize, regulate, educate, tax and rehabilitate, ensuring that any and all drug trade is domestic only, no imports or exports, and all workers and owners, growers, processors and sellers in the business are licensed US citizens. Then he can reassign DEA to the border to help enforce our immigration and trafficking laws.

Judy, you are leathal...