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I came of age in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark, during the 1980s. I witnessed and experienced how crack cocaine infiltrated and devastated Black communities. I watched people I regarded as sisters and fictive kin become victims of the crack cocaine epidemic and the subsequent War On Drugs. The 1980s signified America’s War on Drugs and Tough on Crime Era. The surge in mass incarceration rates that followed continues to be a concern for Black communities that are criminalized and more heavily policed. Historian Carol...
I find it amazing how “the powers that be” are so concerned about Black people using drugs that they feel the need to imprison Black people. However their own children are dying from a lack of that same concern.