President Lyndon B. Johnson ushered in the War on Crime, Nixon began a figurative War on Drugs that became a literal War on Drugs in the Reagan era. These Executive and Legislative policies had racial underpinnings and the government played an acitve role in criminalizing and targeting communities of color? How does this make you feel? Discuss using the quotation below.
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. 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. 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". – John Ehrlichman, Nixon Administration Advisor