Black And Poor Summary

“Blackness,” by Jamaica Kincaid, introduces the short story with a description of the silent and soft blackness. Even though she discovers happiness when buried in blackness, it prevents the unknown narrator from speaking her own identity. It devours her memories and retracts her voice. The narrator feels no joy when immersed in the blackness; she becomes wrapped in turmoil and anarchy. The narrator has brief moments of joy from time to time: the setting sun´s beauty, a laughing child playing with a red ball, and her gazing at clear blue skies. There is a little “blackness” in everyone. The story exposes the different types of blackness that can control one’s life through their fulfillment, stress, weary, power, and identity.

In the 1960s through 1990s, the Urban Crisis and Crack Epidemic had reached its peak and Washington Heights was one of the central areas of the crisis. It was referred to as “the crack and murder capital of the city” (Snyder, 2015). This low-income area was susceptible to the influx of drug distribution and abuse. America’s “War on Drugs” criminalized drug use, but was ineffective in resolving the issue. It also was a factor in alienated the police from the community. The city was ambivalent in their course of action as conservatives and liberals were at odds. Conservatives supposed the only solution was to allow the police to take control and eradicate the crime. Liberals believed that this was not a viable solution and the true issue was inequality (Snyder,

The war on Drugs played a heavy role in minority American society. It affected policing and most importantly the American minority people. The war on drugs started by President Nixon and up until President Bush was a disaster that affected America with high incarceration and high recidivism rates for low level and non-violent drug offenses that mainly targeted minorities in America. The war on drugs was a massive American failure that mainly affected minorities. President Obama and his drug reform alongside the American public’s strong opinion to switch towards marijuana reform which we see in places like Colorado and Washington has caused the war on drugs to lose steam. The American public’s decision for drug reform is no surprise after nearly 40 years of the unsuccessful war on drugs.

The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration have been two very well-known topics of society. While these have taken place during the Cold War, there is still a continuance in them today. The impact that has been left on society from these issues have stuck around, while mass incarceration is still of talk today.

In the story of how “A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets”, Sudhir Venkatesh finds himself in the projects of Chicago documenting his first hand experiences of his journey on how he is introduced to the black culture. Sudhir, a first year college student in the University of Chicago, decides to take part in a research project about “how young blacks were affected by specific neighborhood factors”, although when he quickly realizes how ineffective these questionnaires are, he decides to take unconventional ways to retrieve his answers. Sudhir’s fascination with the housing projects in Chicago only grew the longer he stayed. Before long he had befriended a gang leader and accumulated more information then he had ever thought he would have been able to acquire.

As mentioned in the text, the “war on drugs” is very costly and has been ineffective. This has been a battle that the government has not been able to handle and has impacted society and many cities in a negative way. “Decriminalization and legalization have both been suggested drug control policies at the state and local levels. Both strategies are ‘based on the assumption that drug abuse will never be eliminated.’” This video shows the legalization strategy and proves that cities are thriving economically because of the strategy and shows that the crime rate has not skyrocketed due to the

The War on Drugs is a term that is commonly applied to the campaign of prohibition of drugs. The goal of this campaign is to reduce the illegal drug trade across America. This term “ War on Drugs” was used during Nixon’s campaign in which he declared War on Drugs during a press conference in 1971. Following this declaration many organizations were created to stop the spread of drugs, like the DEA and Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement. Note that Nixon’s approach to this problem was to fund treatment rather than law enforcement. After Nixon’s retirement from office, most of the funding went from going into treatment to the law enforcement. Which militarized the police force giving the officer’s military weapons and gear. With this, the sentencing for possessing drugs was changed as well, resulting incarcerations rates to increase overtime. The increase of incarceration rates started to create many patterns that were soon noticeable. The funding’s that go into the law enforcement has shown to greatly have an affect on the incarceration rates.

President Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971. This declaration consisted of criminalizing drugs like marijuana, and increasing the size of federal drug agencies. The drug war goals were to eliminate the consumption and sell of drugs, and became enforce under President Ronald Regan’s reign. Before I began my research I knew that the legalization of marijuana had major support, but I didn’t know the reason wasn’t for Americans’ health. Instead, it was a tool to stop the social movements of hippies and African-Americans. Through my research I want to know the effects, positive and negative, has had on our society. Questions I hope to answer are: Are majority black neighborhoods heavily patrolled by police, than majority white neighborhoods?

Black-ish is about a family man struggles to gain a sense of cultural identity while raising his kids in a primarily white, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The main artist, which is the family man, would be Anthony Anderson. His wife, Tracee Ross, His older daughter, Yara Shahidi, His older son, Marcus Scribner, His two youngest kids, Miles Brown and Marsai Martin. Black-sih first season premiered on September 24, 2014 and they plan on having two more seasons.

In the United States, Americans have constantly been fighting to eradicate the use of drugs for many decades now. By creating the policy known as “The War on Drugs”, many politicians and presidential advisors of the war on drugs policy claim that it was a necessary element to help deter criminals and reduce crime rate. However, statistics reveals that no dramatic effects or influences has the drug deterrent policy been adequate and successful. (Boyd) Studies tend to show that the racial discrepancy has played in part of why their objective has been so unsuccessful. (Boyd) The policy has led to a disproportionate amount of incarceration minorities of all color and injustice action that law enforcement, and the justice system used to abuse their

The United States has focused its efforts on the criminalization of drug use. In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. . The War on Drugs has been a centerpiece of American foreign and domestic policy. The rhetoric of war shaped the impact of methods. Not only does war require military strategies, but an enemy as well. In this case it was easy to construct African Americans and people of color as the enemy in the War on Drugs. These are the groups that the majority of white Americans have always viewed as the source of crime. President Reagan’s anti drug rhetoric was skillfully designed to tap into deeply held cultural attitudes about people of color and their links to drug use and many other illicit behaviors. While the professed enemies of the War on Drugs were drug cartels in drug source countries, the most affected were people of color in inner city neighborhoods, mainly African Americans. Thus, the social and economic mobility of Black Americans has suffered collateral damage from the War on Drugs and damages the upward mobility of the African American communities.

The United States is known to have the highest incarceration rate in the world and the vast majority of prisoners are convicted of drug related crimes. Today, one cannot think of law enforcement without thinking about drugs. The more drugs are thought of as a police problem the less drugs are seen as a health related problem. If drugs were framed as a public health problem, the United States would observe a different policing practice. The way drugs are perceived and prohibited have many similarities to the alcohol prohibition and one can see that prohibition is not an effective method. The focus on prohibition has deliberately created different policing methods and inadvertently increased crime, changed the function of policing, and has made

I think the message of the book is that no matter how different your family may look, we are all the same, we should see pass color. “Black is brown is tan, is girl is boy, is nose is face, is all the colors of the race”, in the book, Black is brown is tan, is about a family where all the family members are a different shade of brown. The book goes into further detail about the diverse family such as the main characters who are an African American mother, Caucasian father, and two mixed children. Throughout the book, the family are seen doing typical family activities such as combing hair, kissing and hugging family members, sitting around the kitchen table, and spending quality time with each other.

The war on drugs has led to the increase of mass incarceration of people of color and minorities, which is a problem in the United States. The United States is known for holding more children and adults in jails, and

The War on Drugs has given birth to many of the modern day evils. The most widespread repercussion of the War on Drugs is the crime rate. “ In 1990, the number of people sent to state and federal prisons for drug offenses exceeded the number of offenders sent to prison for violent crimes…. Drug offenders currently make up 62 percent of the federal inmate population, up from 22 percent in 1980.”[3] Add to this the fact that most of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders put there under mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the explanation for why this country is running out of prison space should be readily apparent.