"The Most Meaningfully Pro-Black Policy Today"

by Patrick Appel

John McWhorter advocates for the end of the war on drugs:

What will turn black America around for good is not more theatrical marches but the elimination of a policy that prevents too many people from doing their best. After welfare reform in 1996, countless people thought that black women would wind up shivering on sidewalk grates. They underestimated the basic human resilience of black people. In the same way, if the War on Drugs is ended, the same people will assume that young black men will wander about jobless and starving. They will not, because they are human beings with basic resilience and survival instincts as well.