We Must Continue to Root Out Racism

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for leading this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, in 1971, then-President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, which he labeled as ``public enemy number one in the United States.''

Now, at the time of this declaration, America's prisons and jails held fewer than 200,000 people. Today, that number sits at over 2 million people. In fact, the United States incarcerates 25 percent of the world's prisoners, but we have only 5 percent of the world's population.

In fact, shamefully, my State of Wisconsin has the highest incarceration rate of African-American men on the planet Earth.

Now, John Ehrlichman, then-counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Nixon, admitted, Mr. Speaker, that the war on drugs was an effort to vilify African-American leaders and to
disrupt the African-American community; admitted that the war on drugs was contrived to diminish the reputation of African Americans. Indeed, they were successful because the burden of this failed war has fallen
overwhelmingly on African-American communities.

In 2014, African-American adults accounted for just 14 percent of those who used drugs, but close to one-third of those who are arrested for drug possession. And although African Americans and Whites consume drugs at a similar rate, African Americans are significantly more likely to be arrested.

Now, this disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in a nation in which racial groups use drugs at the same rate points to one fact, Mr. Speaker. It can only be explained that race has played an inappropriate role in law enforcement's priorities and tactics.

It is worth noting that in the face of the 1980's crack cocaine epidemic in Black communities, the public policy response was incarceration. Here in 2017, in the face of our current opioid epidemic in predominantly White communities, public officials on both sides of the aisle have banded together to pass landmark legislation to provide drug treatment assistance to those victims.

In recent years, fortunately, leaders on both sides of the aisle have found common ground on the need to reform our broken criminal justice system. Stakeholders from the ACLU to the Koch Institute recognize the crisis of overcriminalization in this country and the need for immediate action.

Both the House and the Senate have made strides toward the passage of bipartisan criminal justice reform in the 114th Congress, but, ultimately, a bill never made its way to the President.

Now our U.S. Attorney General of the United States, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, a most ardent opponent to bipartisan criminal justice reform, sits there and does not inspire hope that those fighting to address this obviously harmful and race-based status quo will do anything.

And although our President has dubbed himself the ``Law and Order President,'' he has not taken the initiative to end this unfair policy.

Just very briefly before I close, Mr. Speaker, I want to list three things that this bipartisan group found would be helpful:

One, we should eliminate Federal mandatory minimum sentencing requirements. We should ensure true sentencing parity among crack and cocaine offenses, and deprioritize nonviolent drug offenders and seek medical treatment.

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