Another Form of Racism

Tonight I attended a public lecture by Professor Harry Reicher on how the Nazis used a faux form of law to justify their annihilation of the Jewish people (and the Roma, homosexuals, and anyone else they didn't like). The Nazis drained the essence out of law, leaving merely the outer shell--indictments, trials, judges--but without any substantive content. There were two kinds of law in Germany: law when two Germans were involved, which still operated according to legal conventions and the law that operated when a Jew was involved. That was merely a pretext.

In the twelve years the National Socialist Party was in power, 2,000 laws were declared, slowly tightening the noose around the Jewish people living in Germany, then all of occupied Europe. The idea was to destroy all influence that Jews had in government, university, business, literature, the arts, everywhere. At the time Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews were less than 1% of the German population, and obviously as the racial laws were announced, (they were not enacted, but mostly decreed by the Fuhrer and his counselors), many Jews fled, so by the time the camps were opened, the population of Jews in Germany was less than .5%.

"No one died in Auschwitz illegally," one scholar has declared. Laws were passed so that the German people believed that the actions taken against Jews were justified, and the Germans were obedient people then, even the Jews.

I am not equating Nazi Germany with any aspect of the United States although there were times during this lecture tonight when I thought about the Bush signing statements, the John Yoo memoranda justifying torture by distorting the meaning of the Geneva Conventions Against Torture, international and domestic law.

That isn't where I want to go.

Instead I want to talk about two systems of law, the two systems of law that operate in the United States now: white law and black law.

I raised a daughter on Long Island. When she was out late, once she was old enough to get into a car or drive one herself, my fear was that she would be in a car accident. An African American mother, my friend Vanessa, who has raised two sons on Long Island once told me that whenever her older son is out late, she worries that he has been picked up by police officers unjustly.

Racism isn't just mugging for fun. This is also how racism manifests itself here.

Another African American mother, a colleague, who has raised three daughters here and who is raising her grandson now wrote this about how law affects her and her daughters:

In May of 1973, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through the state legislature a set of stringent anti-drug laws. Among the most severe in the nation, the purpose of these laws was and is to deter citizens from using or selling drugs and to punish and isolate from society those who were not deterred. "It was thought that rehabilitative efforts had failed; that the epidemic of drug abuse could be quelled only by the threat of inflexible, and therefore certain, exceptionally severe punishment."

The new drug laws, which have since become known as the "Rockefeller Drug Laws" established mandatory prison sentences for the unlawful possession and sale of controlled substances keyed to the weight of the drug involved. Generally, the statutes require judges to impose a sentence of 15-years to life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces, or possessing four ounces of "narcotic drug" (typically cocaine or heroin).

When my daughters, now 28 and 23 starting smoking marijuana, I printed out the above description of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. When they sit in their cars and smoke, I walk to their car window, knock on the window, and ask if they have forgotten the Rockefeller Law?

Life is no longer the same as it was during the 60’s when I was growing up. I was never a drug user, too busy trying to get out of high school. My aunt told me I could get a job at the “phone company” when I graduated high school. I didn’t think I wanted my babysitting money to go up in smoke, up in my nose, or in my arm. Today so many chemicals have been added, weed is man-made. It is made to take your head off your shoulders. The guy who sells weed, now sells crack cocaine, crystal meth, and speed. One guy supplies all. You can buy your works from him. He has become the new BJ’s of the drug world.

I remind my daughters that today, along with the Rockefeller Law, marijuana use is set up to destroy their futures. As young black women, they may not get a job, because of drug testing. They cannot get financial aid to further their education, if arrested for drug possession. No matter the quantity they might be caught with, they lose. For a black person, using drugs sabotages our future.

I don't believe this is true for white people living in middle class suburbs with access to jobs that require a B.A. degree. This is racism, too.