Or in Asian neighbor hoods all over the west coast?
Most East-Asians don’t do drugs btw…
Especially 1st gens and the 1.5/2nd gens that grew up under 1st gen parents
(future generations that get more “Americanized” might be more willing to use illegal drugs)
There’a a huge cultural stigma as a remnant of the Opium Wars… “Drugs=Bad” was heavily drilled into my upbringing… and I was told alcohol and gambling were bad too… and I kinda agreed with it and just accepted theae statements as facts
Like white dudes literally tried the “introduce drugs to your people” thing before… we’re kinda culturually immunized to it, we see what y’all doing, we aint doing it
As a few others have mentioned here… it’s because they were black.
I’ve personally witnessed a racist try to explain to an South Asian friend of mine that he was “OK” because there’s black people and everyone else. I was flabbergasted because this wasn’t some nazi skinhead or something, but instead was an older white gentleman.
All racism is bad. But there’s racism, and then there’s racism in the USA towards black people, which unless you’ve witnessed it, it’s hard to understand how it is a whole other level of racism.
Casual racism vs ranked competitive racism
It’s no joke, I met a racist who hated black people, as himself was black. Racism is so strange and something that far as I can tell no one is born this way but taught. The fact that it is 2026 and we still haven’t broken away from it shows just how prevalent it is. Also the fact that if we met aliens within a few minutes someone would have a racist term for them also shows how human racism is. Makes one wonder if we have a evolutionary trait for it? Because all humans regardless of color have people within their race who are racist. It’s not just a white man thing.
Looking through the answers so far, I think the only thing not covered is why not the po white folk or other groups.
The simple answer really is that they aren’t black, because when it comes right down to it, any excuse they found to target black people would have excluded other groups except by accident.
But, that misses out on the other factor. The Appalachians aren’t a hotbed of protest and opposition. Folks up in the hills are too poor, too spread out, and too disconnected from external policies on a national level. There’s simply no need to destabilize those communities because they’re not a problem to the people making laws and decisions.
Same with the asian populations you asked about.
Black folks in cities have an advantage that rural people of any color don’t. Numbers in concentration. Even a minority can be a disruption to oppressors when there’s enough in one place. So keeping that population off balance becomes a priority for oppressors. That it’s black people in the U.S. is largely a matter of detail because the same principle would apply everywhere, with any given minority population being a target where that population group is a potential difficult to enforcing power. Like the rohingya or uyghur peoples as recent examples that were in the news.
Now, being real, black people across the world have been oppressed and abused for hundreds of years. So pretty much anywhere they exist, they get shit on in some way.
I think the answer is less complicated than you might think.
It’s because they were black.
The government really hated black people at the time should be the legit answer and sometimes I think the Republicans still do.
Sometimes? They all collectively lost their shit when a black man became president. Like, our current situation is partly a result of that.
Some of those that burn crosses, are the same that hold office.
Exactly. Don’t give the racist that much credit. It wasn’t a well thought out plan. It was simply “fuck them ngrs”
It’s not all that deep. Unfortunately. I wish it was a grand plan. It’s not. It’s just “fuck em”
Everyone keeps saying that but how come not poor whites in the mountains or the huge asain in the west at the time? To me I would give some to the white mountain people, majority to asains and some to blacks. Did they just throw a dart at a dart board and it landed on blacks or was it we fucked over the blacks time after time so lets fuck them over again?
It’s so they can make them felons so they can’t vote. They considered black people to be animals, not people.
That’s exactly the reason why cocaine was made illegal, because it’s not a felony to be black.
It’s also the reason marijuana is schedule 1. Can’t throw hippies in prison just for being hippies.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. -Lyndon B. Johnson
Basically, people were already really racist against black people, so it’s easier to just continue that narrative. Build upon all the lies that were used to try and justify enslaving black people to make poor people, including other black people who believe the lies, blame black people for all their problems. That way we fight amongst ourselves instead of looking at and justly blaming the people with power and money
Before Trump’s rise it had become not-okay to be openly racist in most of the country so they had to pivot to openly attacking a different group: queer people, specifically trans people. (They were still very racist, just less open about it.) Blaming a minority or marginalized group is a classic conservative move to stop people from developing class consciousness and realizing that a poor cis straight white man has infinitely more in common with a poor queer trans black woman than a rich (like billionaire rich) cis straight white man
Relevant section from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
As [Edmund] Morgan says, masters, “initially at least, perceived slaves in much the same way they had always perceived servants . . . shiftless, irresponsible, unfaithful, ungrateful, dishonest. . . .” And “if freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done.” And so, measures were taken. About the same time that slave codes, involving discipline and punishment, were passed by the Virginia Assembly,
Virginia’s ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun, while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to get 50 acres of land.
Morgan concludes: “Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests.”
We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.
I’ve never read that before. Thanks for sharing it!
Anti-black racism has been a cornerstone of America since Jamestown
Why would anyone care about poor whites in the mountains? Let them survive in their hovels and shovel coal. They had no organization or other power to affect anyone
Because when you villify one group, the others will join you to fight against them.
If the poor whites and the poor blacks and the poor immigrants ever realized that they’re all on the same team, there wouldn’t be anyone to fight for the rich.
To destabilize black communities and disrupt their growing social and economic power.
It was explicit racism.
Can’t prove blacks are lazy and worthless if you don’t destabilize them and make them lazy and worthless. 🙃
13th amendment and a history of black slaves. Not just crack either. Not complicated: Nixon. His domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman admitted in an interview that the Nixon administration’s “War on Drugs” was designed to target Black communities and anti-war activists.
Here’s the famous quote:
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Black people with heroin, then, by criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Wow it’s so surprising such a country would devolve further, nobody saw it coming /s.
Black communities and anti-war activists.
“What do you mean that broad legal and culturally normalized abuse hasn’t brought them to heel like dogs? Who TF do they think they are, resisting efforts to crush them under heel like insects?”
This should be at the top
Inherent racism and population density. It feels a bit redundant to say it now that i see it written but that’s just the truth of it i guess
The war on drugs was a dog whistle continuation of the Jim Crow era. Because it was now illegal to discriminate against black people simply for being black, new methods of oppression needed to be instituted. When Nixon announced the war on drugs, drug use was going down and was approaching it’s lowest point in decades. His hope was that by finding ways to continue to police black people, he’d win support of Southern Democrats who were largely at the time, pro labor but mad about the civil rights movement.
This strategy worked, and it was continued and expanded under Reagan. When Nancy Reagan pleaded with Americans to ‘just say no’ drug use was at about 3% nationwide.
American police were always a tool of oppression of black communities. They grew out of post civil war racist brotherhoods like the KKK. On multiple occasions, entire chapters of KKK members were deputized.
The narco trafficking the CIA did was a natural progression of this, and was used as an excuse to further militarize the police.
“Because they were black” is a simple answer. And it’s correct. But you could add “and black people are who we oppress in this country.”
All of this was built on slave labor
Appalachians already voted Republican
America never got over giving their “property” freedom.
They didn’t like what the civil rights movement was doing.
The idea that the existence of crack was a government plot is an old and debunked conspiracy theory.
Not that our government isn’t that racist, just that it’s not that competent or forward thinking.
The real racism was the response to crack. The drug became synonymous with black Americans the same way AIDS became synonymous with gay men: because they were the early and obvious victims. Unlike AIDS, crack is actually much less dangerous than people think. Opioids are way worse.
But even the idea that crack was a “black” problem is a myth. My cracker-ass friend group experimented with free-basing cocaine (which is turning cocaine into crystal inside the smoking vessel, a practice far older than “cooking” crack, but produces the same drug and effect)
It’s like Conservatives are godless monsters or something.
I don’t know that. Its modification is so simple I find it hard to believe you need a whole conspiracy around its discovery. Generally flooding cocaine I can believe. Im kinda surprised crack was not something developed sooner giving how dead simple it is. People trumping aroudn with ether when you could just cook it in a baking soda solution.
