A cultural problem that can surely be put down to genetics rather than the fact that a large portion of the current generation of black urban youth have being r

A cultural problem that can surely be put down to genetics rather than the fact that a large portion of the current generation of black urban youth have being raised by their grandparents because their parents are dead, or in jail on drug arrests - with many not even making it to adulthood without being harassed & arrested by drug warriors. In practice, the war on drugs simply drove our market for drugs into the ghetto, robbed them of the ability to regulate that market without violence & warlordism, and then harassed the inhabitants endlessly in a manner largely indistinguishable from earlier policies of racial persecution. Stop and frisk that. A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision whether imprisoned, jailed, on parole or probation. One out of nine African American men will be incarcerated between the ages of 20 and 34. On an average day in 1996, more black male high school dropouts aged 20–35 were in custody than in paid employment; by 1999, over one-fifth of black non-college men in their early 30’s had prison records. How would the prospects for college and middle-class employment look like if no one you grew up knowing had parents who were in a position to help pay for college? ... This is not something that is out of our control to fix, if we decide to. Affirmative action, a social taboo on overt racism and institutional legal equality - all three had a modest impact on the progress of de facto racial integration & equality (measured in, let's say... educational attainment, & household net worth). But the drug war, in urban areas that were still largely segregated, had a negative impact that swamped all of these, and generated giant gaping tumors in 'black culture', as you put it, that we're going to be dealing with for generations. The fact that we've largely dismantled due process for the impoverished to help pay for all this, that our use of leaded gasoline in the 20th century & ensuing soil contamination actually significantly compromised neurological functioning in urban populations (across races), that we assiduously attack welfare programs under the banner of suppressing an inferior 'culture of dependence', and the policy of warehousing the poor in housing projects - these things are not inconsequential.