Busted and Black

If you’re busted for drugs and you’re black, guess what —  surprise, surprise  — you’re more likely to go to prison than if you’re busted and white. That’s the latest findings from the Justice Policy Institute.  As Madison, Wisconsin’s Capital Times puts it, 97 black drug offenders are imprisoned for each white one.

By Noelle McAfee

I am professor of philosophy at Emory University and editor of the Kettering Review. My latest book, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, explores what is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the world today. My other writings include Democracy and the Political Unconscious; Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship; Julia Kristeva; and numerous articles and book chapters. Edited volumes include Standing with the Public: the Humanities and Democratic Practice and a special issue of the philosophy journal Hypatia on feminist engagements in democratic theory. I am also the author of the entry on feminist political philosophy in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and well into my next book project on democratic public life.

1 comment

  1. Shocked, shocked I am that this should be happening. In the 1990s, physicians in Florida were reporting their drug-using patients ot the police (we can discuss the ethics of that some other time) and it seems that black drug abusers were 10 times as likely to get busted as whites. In the light of your new stats, the Florida docs look positively kindly.

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