For Equality's Sake, We Must Eliminate Discrimination - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com: Michelle Alexander is absolutely correct. The war on drugs is a key component of the 21st century’s system of racial control — what I have called in my work for a number of years the racial order. Eliminating draconian drug laws, legalizing marijuana so that its use is treated as what it is —a social drug, with social and medical problems, on the order of alcohol — is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for beginning to rectify the mass incarceration of black males and return a modicum of equity to our criminal justice system and society. Given, however, that the war on drugs is just one component of the racial order that continues to particularly devastate and disadvantage poor black and brown communities, several other steps must be urgently taken if we are actually to build the democratic, just society that has never existed for these communities.
