November 15, 2014 by David K. Sutton
Institutional Discrimination, Racial and Economic, Alive And Well In America
Is it less wrong when a young white adult smokes marijuana compared to a young black adult? How about if the young white adult is middle class while the young black adult is poor, does that change anything? How about if the young white adult is poor and the young black adult is middle class? See, your answer doesn’t really matter, because society has already spoken on this issue. It would seem affluence isn’t really the issue, but skin color is, because blacks are nearly four times more likely to be incarcerated for smoking pot compared to whites, even though whites and blacks use marijuana at the same rate. Of course, we know blacks face a tougher economic reality compared to whites, so you really can’t remove affluence completely from the equation. What that means is institutional racism and institutional economic discrimination are both alive and well in America.
