Stamped from the Beginning: Chapter 33: Reagan’s Drugs Summary & Analysis

The racist retaliation against Black Power materializes in the form of Ronald Reagan, the “law and order” governor of California. While campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Reagan makes false claims about a Black woman abusing the welfare system in order to make $150,000. Reagan narrowly loses the nomination, but the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, introduces a series of welfare cuts anyway. Poverty and unemployment rates soar, and racist white people choose to blame the Black community—and policies such as affirmative action—for their struggles.

In Regents v. Bakke, affirmative action in the California public university system is challenged. During the case, neither side even mentions the fact that the standardized tests used in university admissions have been designed to covertly exclude Black people and other marginalized groups. A paradigm shift has emerged: whereas in the 1950s racists advocated for explicitly “race-conscious” policies (such as Jim Crow segregation) to protect the existing social hierarchy, by the late 1970s racists fight against “race-conscious” policies (such as affirmative action) also in the hope of maintaining the existing hierarchy. In 1978 the University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson publishes The Declining Significance of Race, in which he argues that class is more important than race in “determining black access to privilege and power.”

William Julius Wilson’s argument glosses over the inherent racialization of class, ignoring that in the moment he is writing, middle-class Black people are facing an escalation of racist discrimination. Three years after the book’s publication, Wilson takes the unusual step of publicly acknowledging that his analysis had been wrong. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun warns against the way that “race-blind” policies are used to implement racism. Unfortunately, his warnings are not heeded. Between the 1978 Regents v. Bakke ruling and 2004, the disparity between the number of white students and Black students enrolling in highly selective universities doubles.

Because of the U.S. government’s ongoing regression, persecution, and neglect when it comes to Black communities, many Black people choose to withdraw from U.S. electoral politics and not vote, which earns them the ire of others within the community. In 1979, Angela Davis, now a member of faculty at San Francisco State University’s historic Black Studies department, joins Gus Hall on the Communist Party’s ticket for the 1980 presidential election. Davis is demoralized by the decline in antiracist activism, the resurgence of the Klan and other white supremacist terror groups, and the escalating issue of police brutality. Reagan, meanwhile, successfully manages to win the election by appealing to racist desires without ever mentioning race explicitly.  

As soon as he’s in office, Reagan begins decimating the economic stability of low- and middle-income Americans. As Black communities become poorer and poorer, the new discipline of sociobiology claims that all social behaviors are rooted in genetics, thereby implying that racial inequities are rooted in Black people’s biology without ever explicitly saying so. Davis is one of a number of antiracist scholars who rebuke this new stream of segregationist thought. In 1981 she publishes her famous Women, Race, and Class, “a revisionist history of Black women as active historical agents.” She points out that myths of Black male rapists have historically been used to obscure the reality of white men’s pervasive sexual abuse of Black women.   

In 1982, Reagan announces “one of the most devastating executive orders of the twentieth century”: the inauguration of the War on Drugs. Kendi notes that it’s a strange moment to do so, as at the time rates of drug use are declining and only a small fraction of the population view drugs as a political priority. Horrified by the move, Davis runs for vice president again on the Communist Party ticket in 1984. Basking in false claims about increased prosperity (which, Kendi notes, is in reality limited to the wealthy and white), Reagan is reelected. The following year, CIA-supported rebels in Nicaragua begin smuggling cocaine into the U.S., which is made into the cheaper crack form to be sold in poorer neighborhoods. A new era of racist hysteria about crack use begins.    

In 1986, Reagan passes “the most racist bill of the decade,” the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Under this legislation, sentencing for crack use and distribution is five times more severe than for powder cocaine (which, Kendi points out, is disproportionately used by white wealthy people). The era of mass incarceration begins. Black drug users and dealers are imprisoned at massively higher rates despite the fact that Black people are statistically less likely to deal and use drugs than white people. Policing escalates, fueled by racist ideas about dangerous Black neighborhoods spread by politicians and the media. If the Reagan administration were truly invested in reducing crime, Kendi writes, it would focus on eliminating poverty and economic exploitation; instead, it focuses on the racist “law and order” approach.

A media frenzy helps stimulate the national obsession with crack use even though this is statistically not an especially prominent cause of violence and death. Meanwhile, the media also fixates on pathologizing the Black family with stereotypes of “young welfare mothers and estranged fathers.” In her own research, Davis points out that these stereotypes do not actually correspond to reality. They are in fact little more than propaganda used to support Reagan’s racist policies. Nonetheless, even some Black leaders fall for the illusion that there is “something wrong” with Black families and that a return to traditional family values is what is needed.