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Comment by edent | Hacker News Reader

"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

"In 2013, the ACLU published a report titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White". The report found that despite marijuana use being roughly equal between blacks and whites, blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization_of_non-medic...

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> "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

This one is the original marihuana legislation, predating Nixon's war on drugs, right?

> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

When was this originally published? I keep seeing it in a 2016 magazine, which is a bit odd given how groundbreaking a revelation it is. Especially considering the quote was collected 22 years prior, and the man died 17 years prior. Was this around and just not well known at the time?

> "In 2013, the ACLU published a report titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White". The report found that despite marijuana use being roughly equal between blacks and whites, blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."

Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent.

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent.

It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

So sickle cell anemia is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Sickle cell anemia wasn't imposed via law.

are you arguing that it cannot be racist unless it's law? So if I start throwing around racial epithets it's not racist because it's not law?

> It shows that the intent continues to be racist.

It shows the impact, not the intent, continues to be racist. It doesn't really say anything about intent, at least without a lot more data. If white and black usage differ in kind somehow - say, pot brownies vs smoking on the street (I have no idea if there is a racial disparity here) - it could lead to a difference in police involvement without any racial discrimination.

indeed, and as another poster pointed out, it could also be because police monitor high crime areas more strictly, and so the arrests related to marijuana tends to reflect that fact.

So gun control is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Incidental arrests arise from higher police presence in minority’s neighborhoods due to higher instances of major crime in those neighborhoods.

If I go fishing for redfish I’m going to end up catching a lot more saltwater fish incidentally. Doesn’t mean I hate freshwater fish, that just means in not fishing in an area where I’m going to find many freshwater fish.

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