In the introduction to his new book, When Crack is King: People’s History of a Misunderstood EraJournalist Donovan X. Ramsey recalls that during his childhood in the early 1990s, the term “crackhead” was used as an insult.
He wrote: “I suppose we made it an obscenity, because we were afraid of what it represented, a rock bottom into which any of us could sink. That is. what children do when they seek power over the things that scare us
If only that urge wasn’t so common among adults, especially those in positions of power. But as detailed Ramsey in KingThe crack pandemic is (still) misunderstood largely due to the deliberate ignorance reflected in mainstream media coverage in the 1980s and ’90s, as well as the political convenience of the sounding words “crack baby” and “superpredator,” which are actively being used to pass legislation to further control and control poor communities of color and Black people in particular.
Crack is the common term for cocaine that has been processed using baking soda or ammonia and water to make it smoked. This method of cocaine use is highly addictive in part because it provides a rapid and intense feeling of euphoria that requires frequent use to maintain. As with other drug epidemics, no single event led to the popularity of crack and its disastrous effects on so many of its users and dealers.
Instead, epidemics spread due to a multitude of reasons, such as government policy of isolating economically poor communities of color, the so-called War on Drugs, and a focus on crime. chemicals, the price of cocaine fell and its use was easy. turn to crack. Ramsey also focuses on another important factor: grief. The generational trauma and the grief that black Americans live with is part of that, of course, but Ramsey also focuses on “deep grief.” [which was the] the result of all they had lost in the 60s and 70s – assassinations of their leaders, their communities destroyed by riots, the Civil Rights Movement cost them dearly but in the end missed opportunity and freedom.”
When Crack was king Follows four people who survived the epidemic in different ways. Lennie Woodley, now a substance abuse counselor for LA county, grew up in a volatile and abusive home, with a mother who scolded and beat her and an uncle who served as a source of comfort. before he began sexually abusing her. She started using cocaine, first in powder form and then in crack, when she was a teenager, and spent nearly three decades in the addiction. Through his story, Ramsey sees how “[w]omen users, especially black women, have fallen to the absolute bottom of the nation’s social ladder” and how these women users have “few avenues of income and are often pushed into prostitution, if they have never been prostitutes.”
Ramsey also follows the story of Elgin Swift and Shawn McCray, two men who have worked as agents for a while, albeit in different ways and to different extents. Swift grew up in Yonkers, NY, with a single father who was addicted to crack when Swift was still young, leaving him to fend for himself most of the time, including handling small amounts of crack. On the other hand, McCray was part of Zoo Crew, a now-legendary Newark, NJ drug trafficking organization that became a local apparel brand as well as eventually the name of the show. McCray’s successful youth basketball program. Through the narratives of these men, Ramsey highlights the nuances of the drug trade, which for many is not a career of choice but a way of making more money when not looking. get another job. Also, despite the outdated stereotype of morally corrupt dealers, these men are not trying to expand their customer base by encouraging young people to become addicted. . At the height of the crack epidemic in the mid-1980s, there simply weren’t many casual drug users and young people in the 1990s who despised the substance and turned away from it as well as heroin.
The last figure Ramsey followed was Kurt Schmoke, who served as mayor of Baltimore for much of the 1980s and was an advocate of drug crime long before there was support for the approach. so.
Threaded through four character studies are the political details of the times, crime bills that have led to a dramatic increase in mass incarceration, the insistence of the old media about sensationalizing and offending users, the ineffective War on Drugs and its disastrous consequences, etc. always in clear prose, focusing as much as possible on flesh-and-blood individuals who have already affected by disease.
An outstanding work of people’s first journalism, When Crack Is King not only provides a vivid and candid history, but also shows how communities tend to save themselves even when they are actively targeted by state policy and violence. Ramsey notes at the end of the book that the crack pandemic may be over, but drug-related fads and epidemics come and go, and our governments and media must learn to deal with them well. more – according to the rating of coverage of and react to drug Diseasemay take some time.
Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, book reviewer and novel author All my mother’s lovers.
