Peyote and the racialized war on drugs

A summer of racial unrest throughout the country has led to calls in the presidential campaign to “restore law and order.” It’s the same line used by Richard Nixon in 1968 to appeal to white nationalist fears of black criminality after the “long hot summer of 1967.” Kiersten Willis noted earlier this month that three years later, as president,

Nixon declared a ‘war on drugs’ to quell social unrest across the country — feeding a new racially tinged narrative about ‘inner city’ crime for the constituency he called his ‘silent majority.’ . . . For people of color [today], arrests often turn into imprisonment, whereas whites may face probation or shorter sentences for committing similar acts.

It’s not the first time the federal government has leveraged the issue of drug use to discriminate against particular racial groups. Racialized wars on drugs emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—directed against Chinese people for opium use, African Americans in the South for charges of cocaine use, and Mexicans and Mexican Americans surrounding allegations of marijuana use.