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I imagine its more acceptable to prohibit or demonize affectations of a minority culture than it is to prohibit the culture itself. The original American war on

I imagine its more acceptable to prohibit or demonize affectations of a minority culture than it is to prohibit the culture itself. The original American war on drugs has testimonies to suggest it came from a desire to persecute blacks and anti-war protesters. Anecdotally, where I live the city has passed ordnances against selling or displaying wire-wrap jewelry on the streets, and I can't think of a reason to single that out except that, because the materials are cheap it is a common source of income for transient populations. You can't make them illegal directly, but you can make all their activities illegal and arrest them when they inevitably break the law.

SturgeonsLaw 10y ago
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday. "You understand what I'm saying? 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 blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "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." http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-r...