Title: Criminal injustice: The percentage of African-Americans in prison
Headings: Criminal injustice: The percentage of African-Americans in prison
Criminal injustice: The percentage of African-Americans in prison
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Content: White students use cocaine and heroin at seven times the rate of black students, and use crack at eight times the rate, according to a study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Eugene Jarecki, filmmaker behind the documentary "The House I Live in," thinks that Americans have been swindled into believing these higher incarceration rates among minorities are justified by drug use. Recommended
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"We lived for a very long time with the idea that crack is a black drug and powder is a white drug, and the actual facts that I discovered when I made the film is that crack was never a black drug," he said. " The majority of crack users in the United States of America are and always have been white." "Once you know that fact, it reminds you how much propaganda has hoodwinked us for 40 years about these drugs," he added. As of 2002, more than 80% of Americans sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws were African-Americans, according to the Sentencing Project, which also has found black drug offenders have a 20% greater chance of being sentenced to prison than white drug offenders, while Hispanics has a 40% greater chance. Jarecki applauds the Obama administration for taking steps to help mend the program, referring to the Justice Department's recent push to stop pursuing charges on low level drug offenders when mandatory minimum sentences could put them away for long stretches of time. "The president and the attorney general have actually done something in Washington where nothing gets done, they have made a very serious move against the drug war for the first time in its history," he said, But for Michelle Alexander and Rev. Sharpton, the concern is what happens in 2016. " Much more can be done and its going to take an awakening in our communities, and a real movement must be built if we want to end this," Alexander said. "We must make sure there's not a regression after this administration," Sharpton said.