On his book Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed
Cover Interview of November 06, 2019
In a nutshell
Crack tells the story of the young men who bet their
lives on the rewards of selling “rock” cocaine, the people who gave themselves
over to the crack pipe, and the often merciless authorities who incarcerated
legions of African Americans caught in the crack cocaine underworld.
Based on interviews, archival research, judicial records,
underground videos, and prison memoirs, Crack explains why, in a
de-industrializing America in which good paying, dignified jobs in inner cities
were rare, selling rock cocaine made cold, hard sense to a broad cohort of
young men. The crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the “Horatio Alger
boys” of their place and time, especially in an era in which market forces
ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated.
These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs
were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic
globalization. Like their mostly legit counterparts in 1980s and 1990s America
(e.g., Donald Trump and his “Art of the Deal”), they embraced the “creative
destruction” that was simultaneously tearing apart communities and reinventing
American capitalism.
Hip Hop artists often celebrated the exploits of the crack
kingpins and their crews. Biggie Smalls laid out “The Ten Crack Commandments”
for aspiring dealers. In “Kilo,” Ghostface Killah of the Wu Tang Klan explained
the joy of moving weight and reaping the benefits of seemingly unattainable
wealth. For some of their peers, crack dealers were the neighborhood Robin
Hoods. They were the “social bandits” of their economically beat-down streets.
Overwhelmingly, Americans—across racial lines—did not take
so kindly to the crack dealers and “crackheads.” Crack dealers defended their
drug selling territories with unvarnished violence. Homicide rates soared in
poor, inner city neighborhoods. Innocents were caught in the crossfire. Crack
addicts robbed, stole, and prostituted themselves to pay for their rocks. Poor
people were prey for crack dealers; families and neighbors in poor communities
paid the heaviest price for the localized crack epidemics of the 1980s and
1990s.
Americans, fueled by fear and sometimes hysteria, cracked
down on the sale and use of rock cocaine. Congress, supported by presidents
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, passed draconian federal laws that punished crack
dealers with sentences that often exceeded those handed out to murders and
rapists. State and local authorities followed suit. Authorities spent billions
to build a merciless system of mass incarceration. Overwhelmingly, that
punishing carceral machinery targeted black Americans.
Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late
twentieth century capitalism. It examines how an explosive mix of deviant
globalization, racial inequities, and the war on drugs shattered American
society.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Crack tells the story of the young men who bet their lives on the rewards of selling “rock” cocaine, the people who gave themselves over to the crack pipe, and the often merciless authorities who incarcerated legions of African Americans caught in the crack cocaine underworld.
Based on interviews, archival research, judicial records, underground videos, and prison memoirs, Crack explains why, in a de-industrializing America in which good paying, dignified jobs in inner cities were rare, selling rock cocaine made cold, hard sense to a broad cohort of young men. The crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the “Horatio Alger boys” of their place and time, especially in an era in which market forces ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated.
These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic globalization. Like their mostly legit counterparts in 1980s and 1990s America (e.g., Donald Trump and his “Art of the Deal”), they embraced the “creative destruction” that was simultaneously tearing apart communities and reinventing American capitalism.
Hip Hop artists often celebrated the exploits of the crack kingpins and their crews. Biggie Smalls laid out “The Ten Crack Commandments” for aspiring dealers. In “Kilo,” Ghostface Killah of the Wu Tang Klan explained the joy of moving weight and reaping the benefits of seemingly unattainable wealth. For some of their peers, crack dealers were the neighborhood Robin Hoods. They were the “social bandits” of their economically beat-down streets.
Overwhelmingly, Americans—across racial lines—did not take so kindly to the crack dealers and “crackheads.” Crack dealers defended their drug selling territories with unvarnished violence. Homicide rates soared in poor, inner city neighborhoods. Innocents were caught in the crossfire. Crack addicts robbed, stole, and prostituted themselves to pay for their rocks. Poor people were prey for crack dealers; families and neighbors in poor communities paid the heaviest price for the localized crack epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s.
Americans, fueled by fear and sometimes hysteria, cracked down on the sale and use of rock cocaine. Congress, supported by presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, passed draconian federal laws that punished crack dealers with sentences that often exceeded those handed out to murders and rapists. State and local authorities followed suit. Authorities spent billions to build a merciless system of mass incarceration. Overwhelmingly, that punishing carceral machinery targeted black Americans.
Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late twentieth century capitalism. It examines how an explosive mix of deviant globalization, racial inequities, and the war on drugs shattered American society.