Big news: The Senate just held a hearing on whether to get rid of the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity that has separated tens of thousands of Black families for decades. Here are a few things you probably don't know, and they will shock you to the core:
First, for seven years from 1988-1995 after Congress created the 100:1 crack/cocaine disparity, U.S. prosecutors chose not to prosecute a single white person for crack cocaine in Boston, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and 17 states.
Second, cops and prosecutors chose to use the harsh crack cocaine sentences almost exclusively against Black people, even though Black people were not even the majority of people who used or sold the drug!
Third, feds created the 100:1 disparity even though they knew there was no pharmacological difference between the two substances. Cops/prosecutors/judges sent generations of Black people to prison, many to die, because of this indefensible policy that they knew had no basis.
Fourth, over 10 years ago, the federal government finally admitted in public testimony what every expert had been saying for years: the crack cocaine disparity was racial discrimination and served no legitimate penological purpose whatsoever.
Fifth, in 2010 the Senate chose to only reduce the disparity to 28:1. I want you to pause on this for a moment: ***politicians knew it served no purpose and was discriminatory, but they allowed prosecutors and judges to keep doing it for more than a decade anyway.***
Sixth, in one of the most shameful moments in U.S. legal history, after a federal court overturned the disparity as unconstitutional discrimination in a ruling that would have freed 1000s of Black people, Obama DOJ got right-wing judges to reinstate it. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Congress now has an opportunity to end one of the most grotesque and flagrant racial injustices in modern times—part of why the U.S. incarcerates Black people at 6 times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid. Will politicians do it? judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/exami…
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