I have been a staunch opponent against several things that have decimated families and destroyed lives in the Black community for decades – mass incarceration, mandatory minimum sentencing and a fake, made-up “War on Drugs” that I have always believed was the brainchild of our government.
I have been talking about these issues for some time, but it seems as if many people refuse to listen or believe that this “War on Drugs” was a systematic and diabolical plan to negatively impact the Black community; which is why I was both shocked and thrilled to recently read an article online that confirmed my theory that the “War on Drugs” was a concocted plan to deliberately destroy the Black community.
Now let’s be clear, President Richard Nixon was always rumored to hate and look down on Black people. Here is proof of that. President Nixon is on tape, being recorded as saying: “We’re going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family … I have the greatest affection for them [Blacks], but I know they’re not going to make it for 500 years. They aren’t. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time, they steal, they’re dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.”
When a man, let alone the President of the United States of America, is caught on an audio recording having this view of Black people, then you know that what I am about to share with you must be true.
Nixon took office in 1969 claiming that he was determined to curtail the growing drug problem in America, and he worked with Congress to introduce a bill to address drug addiction, through rehabilitation. He also said he wanted to provide better tools for law enforcement in the fight against drug trafficking and manufacturing, as well as provide a more balanced scheme of penalties for drug crimes. The bill, called the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, repealed mandatory minimum drug sentences except in limited and serious circumstances; but it also gave law enforcement officials the right to conduct “no-knock” searches, whereby they could enter premises without ever notifying the occupants they were about to do so.
Behind the scenes, Nixon appears to have had an even more sinister plan in mind that usurped his alleged desire to provide a solution to the “drug problem” in America. A recently released quote from a former Nixon staffer, in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum, states that Nixon had it in for Black people and sought to destroy the Black community through a systematic and well-orchestrated “War on Drugs.”
According to John Ehrlichman, who served as White House Counsel and White House Domestic Affairs Advisor for President Nixon from 1969-1973, the “War on Drugs” was a war on Black people and was designed to criminalize Black people and negatively impact the Black community.
Although he died in 1999, the words of Ehrlichman live on. Don’t believe me, Ehrlichman himself said: “You want to know what this was really all about … The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
This isn’t a shock to me, but the response to the quotes from Ehrlichman by three of his colleagues serve as a reminder that White supremacy is real and that many White people have the same view of Black people as President Nixon did – an inferior one.
Three of Ehrlichman’s former colleagues, who were also former Nixon aides, released a joint statement insinuating that the public shouldn’t take his words in the quote seriously, because Ehrlichman was always known to be sarcastic and if he said it then he was mistaken.
Everybody who knows me knows I am a fan of television and movies.
I like all kinds of movies and TV, especially classics. One of my favorite classic movies is The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), starring Clint Eastwood. In one scene, Captain Fletcher (John Vernon) is having a conversation with Senator James H. Lane (Frank Schofield), who had put a $5,000 bounty on Josey Wales (Eastwood). One scene has always stood out to me because it symbolizes how I believe Black people get treated every day, especially as it relates to things that we know have been systematically generated to negatively impact the Black community.
Senator Lane: The war’s over. Our side won the war. Now we must busy ourselves winning the peace. And Fletcher, there’s an old saying: To the victors belong the spoils.
Fletcher: There’s another old saying, Senator: Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.
Now, how in the hell can Jeffrey Donfeld, Jerome H. Jaffe M.D. and Robert DuPont, M.D, speak for another man, a colleague, who is deceased and can no longer speak for himself. But guess what? He doesn’t have to speak for himself anymore because he’s already spoken. We don’t need anyone else to tell us what Ehrlichman was thinking when he made those comments, because he was very clear and concise and knew he was being interviewed “on the record” by journalist Dan Baum in 1994.
Ehrlichman said those words and I believe he meant 100% of what he said. Stop lying to yourself, because we know you have lied to us and will continue to lie to us. We are no longer buying it though, because the truth is coming out and we want answers and accountability for these systematic decisions.
The U.S. prison population has grown by almost 800% since 1980. Between 1985 and 1995, the American prison population of drug offenders increased from 38,900 to 224,900, with Black males being the leaders. There are about 7% of Black males in the nation, yet there are approximately 46% of Black males in prisons nationwide. Black people only account for 13.6 percent of the U.S. population, yet approximately 47 percent of prisoners are locked up for drug offenses, many of them non-violent offenders. No other country in the entire world has a larger prison population than the U.S., and our Black men and women are the leading occupants of those prisons.
It is interesting that Ehrlichman’s former three colleagues think he was just being sarcastic and joking around, but I don’t see a damn thing funny about the numerous Black lives and Black families who’ve been destroyed because of the unjust laws that President Nixon and others enacted and had carried out.
This is a tremendous travesty, but just like slavery and wrongful convictions, who is going to be held accountable for the wrong that has been done to us a people – anybody?
Stop pissing on Black people and telling us that it is raining! If it looks like piss and smells like piss, then it is piss, and I suggest that you stop pissing on Black people, because it’s starting to piss us off and we are tired of being pissed on by you. Trust me – we are tired of being pissed on by you.
Jeffrey L. Boney serves as Associate Editor and is an award-winning journalist for the Houston Forward Times newspaper. Jeffrey is a frequent contributor on the Nancy Grace Show and has a daily radio talk show called Real Talk with Jeffrey L. Boney. He is a Next Generation Project Fellow, dynamic international speaker, experienced entrepreneur, business development strategist and Founder/CEO of the Texas Business Alliance. If you would like to request Jeffrey as a speaker, you can reach him at jboney1@forwardtimes.com