In the USA the drug laws are on the face of it color-blind and levels of drug-taking by whites and blacks are at equal levels. However the rules are selectively enforced and selectively prosecuted so that blacks are far more likely to be charged, sentenced and imprisoned.
This has led to a New Jim Crowe of mass incarceration of black people, at far higher levels than in apartheid South Africa, so that the USA today, under Obama, is, objectively speaking an institutionally racist state and something akin to a racial caste system has been built in America.
Michelle Alexander explains this in detail at in this lecture on selective enforcement:
Human rights investigations 
7 replies on “Higher % of black people imprisoned in the USA than in apartheid South Africa”
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[…] In June 2011 we reported on an excellent lecture by Michelle Alexander on how the so-called drugs war has been used to create a racial caste system in the United States of America. Whilst other human […]
Reblogged this on The Rewild West and commented:
I saw it firsthand in Illinois, the staggering racial bias of prisons; in that state, blacks make up 13 percent of the total population but represent 76 PERCENT of those incarcerated.
[…] The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. More than 60 percent of […]
[…] The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. More than 60 percent of […]
[…] United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of […]
[…] to a one in seventeen chance among White men. Unbelievably, the United States now imprisons a larger percentage of the Black population than South Africa did during the height of apartheid. The racial biases, […]