Unequal under law : race in the war on drugs / Doris Marie Provine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Provine, Doris Marie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race discrimination--Law and legislation--United States.

Race discrimination.

Race discrimination--Law and legislation.

United States.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration--United States.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration.

Equality before the law--United States.

Equality before the law.

Drug control--United States.

Drug control.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

viii, 207 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Summary:

Race is clearly a factor in government efforts to control dangerous drugs, but the precise ways that race affects drug laws remain difficult to pinpoint. Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts. Doris Marie Provine's engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design.

Contents:

Racial discrimination in the eyes of the law

Race in America's first war on drugs

Negro cocaine fiends, Mexican marijuana smokers, and Chinese opium addicts : the drug menace in racial relief

Congress on crack : how race-neutral language hides racial meaning

The racial impact of the war on drugs : how government coped

Racial justice : the courts consider sentencing disparities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-195) and index.

ISBN:

9780226684604

0226684601

9780226684628

0226684628

OCLC:

84903534

Online:

Publisher description