The House I Live In Analysis

Over the course of the last forty years, the United States has been battling the “War on Drugs.” A phrase coined by President Richard Nixon in 1971 to launch his campaign to protect America and its citizens from the harm that is associated with the use of drugs. This brought about new legislation in the form of mandatory minimum sentencing, which resulted in causing mass incarceration throughout this county. These selectively enforced policies that mainly target minorities “have transformed the war on drugs into a war on minorities and immigrants, leading to a staggering number of imprisoned minorities” (Sirin). The issue of mass incarceration in the United States stems from a greater social issue that has been going on in this country
In the 1800’s certain kinds of drugs that are considered criminal today - heroin and cocaine - were commonly used by middle-aged successful whites. The first anti-drug law was introduced on the west coast as a city ordinance in San Francisco. Opium (heroin) smoking became a criminal offense. However, it wasn’t opium that was the concern, but rather the people smoking it (Sarin). Chinese immigrants that were working hard on the transcontinental railroad introduced the habit of smoking opium to the citizens, and they eventually became part of the American success story. White workers began to fear that the Chinese were taking jobs away from them and were fraternizing with white women in opium dens. Politicians got together to figure out a plan to put a stop to this. They knew it wasn’t possible to throw someone in jail just for being Chinese, but a known behavior associated with the Chinese, like smoking opium, could be made into a criminal act exercised to punish these Chinese immigrants. Next, we see at the turn of the century, cocaine, which was associated with blacks, also became criminal when it was suspected that black workers were taking jobs away from white workers. Then, during the 1930’s, the Depression Era, Mexicans were working hard and working for much less, which, once again, threatened to take jobs
After the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 was passed, within the first five years the population of African Americans in state prisons grew from 7 percent to 25 percent, with more dramatic increases at the federal level (Tonry & Hatlestad, 1997; Provine, 2007)” (Sarin). Although the War on Drugs has become an ineffective war that targets minority populations in the name of law enforcement, several progressive steps have been taken to address the racial disparities and injustices associated with mandatory minimum sentencing laws, such as the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 under the Obama Administration, which reduced the ratio of powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 (Sarin), but this act is not retroactive and doesn’t affect crack cocaine offenses. Much more remains to be done to not only redeem the past but prevent further injustices that will inevitably cause a greater expansion to our already mass incarceration issue.. Taking into account the element of othering which may be common to both caste-based and mental health-based exclusion,