1AC Evidence and Advocacy Statement
Frances Cress Welsing, in her book “The Isis Papers,” articulates her colorconfrontation theory and how it has led whites to engage in genocide on non-white
groups out of a fear of genetic annihilation. This is evident in how the War on Drugs
has functioned as a large contributor to the larger system of Racism/White
supremacy. Shed defines her theory as:
Welsing 91 (Dr. Frances Cress. “The Isis Papers, The Keys to the Colors.” Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is a
psychiatrist practicing in Washington D.C. Book published by Third World Press.)
“A local and global power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as
white; The ultimate purpose of this system is to prevent white genetic annihilation on Earth- a planet in
which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white people and are genetically
dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetically recessive white-skinned people.”
In her 2010 book, “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander lays out how the current
criminal justice system and mass incarceration operate as new forms of Jim Crow. In
it, Alexander describes how African Americans and other non-white groups are the
targets of police profiling and drug enforcement, leading to nightmarish rates of
imprisonment for non-white bodies.
Alexander 10 (Michelle. “The New Jim Crow.” Pp. 98-100. Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil
rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. Former director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern
California. Book published by The New Press.)
“This is the War on Drugs. The brutal stories described above are not isolated incidents, nor are the racial identities
of Emma Faye Stewart and Clifford Runoalds random or accidental. In every state across our nation, African
Americans—particularly in the poorest neighborhoods—are subjected to tactics and practices that
would result in public outrage and scandal if committed in middle-class white neighborhoods. In the
drug war, the enemy is racially defined. The law enforcement methods described in chapter 2 have been
employed almost exclusively in poor communities of color, resulting in jaw-dropping numbers of African
Americans and Latinos filling our nation’s prisons and jails every year. We are told by drug warriors that the enemy
in this war is a thing—drugs—not a group of people, but the facts prove otherwise.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90
percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.3 In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison
on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.4 In fact,
nationwide, the rate of incarceration for African American drug offenders dwarfs the rate of whites.
When the War on Drugs gained full steam in the mid-1980s, prison admissions for African Americans
skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling in three years, and then increasing steadily until it reached in 2000 a
level more than twenty-six times the level in 1983. 5 The number of 2000 drug admissions for Latinos was
twenty-two times the number of 1983 admissions.6 Whites have been admitted to prison for drug offenses at
increased rates as well —the number of whites admitted for drug offenses in 2000 was eight times the number
admitted in 1983—but their relative numbers are small compared to blacks’ and Latinos’.7 Although the
majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people
imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino .8 In recent years, rates of black imprisonment for
drug offenses have dipped somewhat—declining approximately 25 percent from their zenith in the mid-1990s—but
it remains the case that African Americans are incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates throughout the United
States.9”
Not only has the system of mass incarceration created a prison system that is vastly
overpopulated with people of color, but mass incarceration along with the War on
Drugs have even infected our very minds with anti-black thoughts, where we cannot
conceptualize crime without thinking of people of color. Alexander continues that:
Alexander 10 (Michelle. “The New Jim Crow.” Pp. 197-199. Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil
rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. Former director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern
California. Book published by The New Press.)
“ The critical point here is that, for black men, the stigma of being a “criminal” in the era of mass
incarceration is fundamentally a racial stigma. This is not to say stigma is absent for white criminals; it
is present and powerful. Rather, the point is that the stigma of criminality for white offenders is
different—it is a nonracial stigma.
An experiment may help to illustrate how and why this is the case. Say the following to nearly anyone
and watch the reaction: “We really need to do something about the problem of white crime.”
Laughter is a likely response. The term white crime is nonsensical in the era of mass incarceration ,
unless one is really referring to white-collar crime, in which case the term is understood to mean the
types of crimes that seemingly respectable white people commit in the comfort of fancy offices.
Because the term white crime lacks social meaning, the term white criminal is also perplexing. In that
formulation, white seems to qualify the term criminal—as if to say, “he’s a criminal but not that kind
of criminal.” Or, he’s not a real criminal—i.e., not what we mean by criminal today.
In the era of mass incarceration, what it means to be a criminal in our collective consciousness has
become conflated with what it means to be black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while
the term black criminal is nearly redundant. Recall the study discussed in chapter 3 that revealed
that when survey respondents were asked to picture a drug criminal, nearly everyone pictured
someone who was black . This phenomenon helps to explain why studies indicate that white exoffenders may actually have an easier time gaining employment than African Americans Without a
criminal record.53 To be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to
be despicable—a social pariah. To be a white criminal is not easy, by any means, but as a white
criminal you are not a racial outcast, though you may face many forms of social and economic
exclusion. Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal.
Derrick Bell in his 2008 article “Race, Racism and American Law” writes:
“Blacks have put most of their effort into assimilation or integration, this required a
denial of selfhood. But emulation of whites has not led to assimilation. At best, some
middle class Blacks have become "acceptable" to liberal whites. Civil rights laws are
generally unenforced and their penalties are not severe. Moreover, even when the
laws were obeyed white attitudes toward Blacks did not change. Persecution in many
forms continues. A revolution is not on the horizon, and even if it were, it could well
replace one racist society with another. The only viable alternative for Blacks is to
separate themselves from the United States.”
Advocacy Statement
Therefore, The United States of Black African Americans should legalize marijuana.
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