Elijah Cummings is about to get all up in Carmelo Anthony's behind.
More coming...
"Cooning"?
"COONING"?
I'm going to say that you have no clue what happened in Baltimore last year when a woman snitched on drug dealers to try to get the area around her home cleaned up from the drug thugs.
I'm going to let you slide on your comments, based on the HOPE that you are IGNORANT, in the true sense of the word.
Stay tuned....
Posted by: DarkStar at May 8, 2005 05:19 PMDrug gangs are killing each other left and right and innocents are getting caught in the crossfire already again in Kansas City.
That's prohibition and crime for you without the benefit of an encompassing mafia to organize and adjudicate small scale IGNORANT criminal commerce. I'd much rather black drug criminality syndicate on a larger and more professional scale.
Ultimately, the problem will not be solved by increasing levels of cooperation with enforcement of the prohibition, economics militate against that, but rather by elimination of the prohibition itself.
Perhaps you can rationally explain why black folks should support the underlying disparately impactful drug prohibition itself - particularly in light of the indisputably racialized and propagandized history of drug prohibition in America beginning with Anslinger et al?
Posted by: cnulan at May 9, 2005 11:11 AMWell first of all you have to ask why blacks are not drug kingpins as it stands. I think the reason is that no African Americans of substance have decided to get into the drug business.
We can take it at face value that the most successful players in the drug business are those blacks who have laundered their money into rap, but that very fact suggests one of two things. Either they hit the glass cieling in the drug business, ie they couldn't hang with Columbians and the Mafia, or they decided that rap was more profitable.
In either case I'm certain you would need a whole new breed of criminals to compete in the global drug trade, and just like in any other field of endeavor, African Americans need to grow a couple generations of backbone to go big.
Drug prohibition is the law. The question is who among the African American population is far enough into deep wells of power and influence to bend the law. I say Vernon Jordan and his peeps. But I don't think that any of the masses Progressives sweat about can hang.
Let's also remember one more thing. I think it is a reasonable assumption to say that most African Americans don't have cops or attorneys in their families or as friends. That's what it takes to tweak the law.
Posted by: Cobb at May 9, 2005 07:07 PMProhibition is what we have now.
The punks firebombed a home and killed a family except for 1 family member.
Wiped. Them. Out. By. Fire.
That is fact. You are pimping theory.
The fact is most Blacks are law abiding citizens. The fact is most Blacks in "extreme" circumstances don't resort to pushing death and destruction.
If you support that madness, fine.
But that's not Black people. That's animals.
Posted by: DarkStar at May 9, 2005 09:39 PMThe "coon" is an animal.
Animals can be caged.
The economy is a cage.
The hood is a cage.
The law is a cage.
Weakness is a cage.
Fear is a cage.
Tell me exactly what Cummings has to lose by out-of-the-cage engagement of the law and political process in which he is embedded as a so-called leader? Far as I can see, the drug prohibition has more black people perniciously caught up in a racially disparate criminal justice system than at any time since slavery. Incarceration has fundamentally destroyed the fabric of the black family, which in turn brings down the future prospects for black children, and being caged in the belly of this contemporary beast is the single greatest risk factor for contracting HIV/AIDS which is wreaking havoc among black women in general.
when I said this stuff on the 18th I meant it;
2. Racist Criminal Justice Problem Sphere - afrostocrats must challenge it. Start with the War on Young Black Men I mean Drugs and leverage off the crank epidemic among poor whites and the disparate sentencing standards and voila!
I am so tired of reactionary chickenheads who squander what little fortitude they have in post hoc reflex resposes to the anecdotal crisis du jour. If Cummings wants to lead and capture the imaginations of his constituents, then he ought to lead big, and take on systemic root causes of big problems that have a bunch of black folks in cages, and not this little *heart wrenching* episode and not the little Coon on coon aspect of the situation he's addressed himself to.
I suspect Cynthia McKinney wouldn't be so lacking in testicular fortitude...,
We agree that our situation is akin to Prohibition.
I don't understand why we don't agree that work should be done to change this situation. Every stat Craig has laid out is correct. It is very clear that the prison industrial complex makes its bank off of nonviolent black offenders, offenders guilty of drug crimes. In this case it's a matter of both/and, not either/or.
That is, we cannot allow a situation in which "snitchjacketing" occurs. It increases disorder and lawlessness in places that need them the most. It increases fear, pain, and suffering among law abiding citizens.
BUT we cannot continue to fight for Prohibition policies either.
Homeboy Cummings should have moved against the DVD AND JOINED SCHMOLKE IN CALLING FOR REVISING DRUG LAWS!
The fact that he did one and not the other is telling.
Posted by: Lester Spence at May 11, 2005 04:58 PMIt is very clear that the prison industrial complex makes its bank off of nonviolent black offenders, offenders guilty of drug crimes.
You know, I have to get real simple minded here...
The "prison industrial complex" becomes moot if people don't commit crimes.
Posted by: DarkStar at May 13, 2005 05:46 PMSimple minded.
You said it, I didn't.
That's a problem. A nasty disease. I've got a cure though. Let me know if you need something else for that simplemindedness.
Posted by: Lester Spence at May 13, 2005 05:54 PMAnd as I always respond, why is it that most Blacks don't contribute to the bottom line of the p.i.c.?
Those who I grew up with who went that route, were not forced to go that route. When low level dealers do their trade in a way to minimize the amount they may get caught with, so that they don't get long mandatory sentences, I have no sympathy.
Posted by: DarkStar at May 14, 2005 11:09 PMWhen i write a paper about the roots of pan-african support among african americans, i don't have sympathy for the numbers i crunch.
I crunch them...write up the analysis, and move on.
Sympathy and a dollar will get you on the subway.
Simple mindedness is literally ignorance. We don't need this. It doesn't help us analyze. Doesn't help us hypothesize. Doesn't help us organize. It's cute, pithy, and utterly useless.
Posted by: Lester Spence at May 14, 2005 11:20 PM
does cooning never cease?....,
Wouldn't Cummings time be better spent following in the footsteps of the far more intelligent and courageous Kurt Schmoke?
Ending disparate sentencing laws and the absurd war on black men, oops I meant drug prohibition, would do a damn sight more to get the boot out of the hood's behind.
Posted by: cnulan at May 8, 2005 11:29 AM