WHEN BLACK LIVES MATTERED

Power Line  "Don’t miss Jason Riley’s review of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, by Michael Javen Fortner. Riley’s review bears the perfect title of “When Black Lives Mattered.” During the period chronicled in Fortner’s book, black lives mattered enough to try to protect them by vigorously fighting drug-related crime.

"Fortner, an African-American who teaches at City University of New York, was raised in Brooklyn during the height of the crack epidemic. He can thus describe “the hurt and terror of those who clutch their billfolds as they sleep, of those who exit their apartments and leave their buildings with trepidation, and of those who have had to bury a son or daughter because of gang activity, the drug trade, or random violence.”

"These people are the “black silent majority” referred to in the title of Fortner’s book.

"The Rockefeller drug laws referred to therein are tough anti-drug measures adopted at the urging of the black silent majority. Fortner’s research persuaded him that this cohort, not unreasonably, “was much more alarmed about drug addiction and violent crime than its white analogue” and ultimately motivated to take action." . . .


The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment

Riley's review   "Hence the tendency of leftists to obsess over the racial imbalance of the prison population while rarely discussing the racial imbalance among perpetrators of crime—as if the two are wholly unrelated."