Sympathy is for white people...

[Kind of Blue]

Sympathy is for white people: The “60 Minutes” segment that highlights America’s startling double standard on addiction

"60 Minutes” segment “Heroin in the Heartland.” was an exposé on the human cost of drug use, the families destroyed and the lives lost. It was also an example of how, in the War on Drugs, black and brown people receive hefty prison sentences, while white people are shown, above all else, sympathy. Lady Justice is not blind.

Host Bill Whitaker began the segment as follows:

“You might think of heroin as primarily an inner-city problem. But dealers, connected to Mexican drug cartels, are making huge profits by expanding to new, lucrative markets: suburbs all across the country. It’s basic economics. The dealers are going where the money is and they’re cultivating a new set of consumers: high school students, college athletes, teachers and professionals.

“Heroin is showing up everywhere — in places like Columbus, Ohio . The area has long been viewed as so typically Middle American that, for years, many companies have gone there to test new products. We went to the Columbus suburbs to see how heroin is taking hold in the heartland.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/04/sympathy_is_for_white_people_the_60_minutes_segment_that_highlights_americas_startling_double_standard_on_addiction/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[Anansi1171]

1. Three recs and no replies. Woo-hoo, GO DU!!!!!!!;

[Kind of Blue]

4. LOLOL!!! Yeah, no mention of Bernie. n/t

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. This is so true. When the problems of the inner cities hit "Middle America" is when politicians....

sit up & take notice. This is something we've known all along. I listened to Chris Christie's very touching story about his lawyer friend, and it moved me. But as soon as the video was done, I asked myself if the problem hadn't touched so close to home, would he still care?

I don't care how the system gets reformed, and I don't really care who does it, but it's broken. While my community gets warehoused in for profit prisons, most of those in "Middle America" get sent off to treatment because they have resources. That's just wrong.

[msongs]

3. how it gets reformed is make drugs legal so users can come out in the open and get help or

friends/family can seek help knowing their drug user will not be hauled of to jail

[Kind of Blue]

5. Yup, absolutely nothing new!

I've been hearing about it since the '80s - particularly in suburbia - It just makes me wonder why this focus on sympathy. What's a changing? What's about to change, I wonder.

[Journeyman]

12. The Affordable Care Act is what has changed. Money is now available for rehab treatment . . .

Until earlier this year, I was on the Board for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. The amount of money that is now available for recovery is astonishing when compared to what we received in the past. Where before we were largely dependent on donations and government support, there is now insurance money up and out the wazoo. A very different world today than it was before the ACA.

[Tarheel_Dem]

13. This is great news, and I'm thrilled that there are fresh resources available for POC, but one...

still has to wonder why it took so long for so many to arrive at the empathy now being shown for substance abuse. Don't get me wrong, I'll take it however we arrived at it.

[Rebkeh]

6. Some of the problems

black people have been dealing with for years are now crises being faced by low/middle class whites. As if income inequality is new and abuses by authority suddenly are a scourge on democracy. I first noticed how big it had gotten when Occupy came on the scene. The double standard is sickening, insulting and appalling.

I'm not knocking Occupy, I support them and I tried to get on board with my local camp but ... Well that's a whole 'nother thread.

With the way things are going, the .01% are eventually going to be on top and the 1%ers that are left are going to find themselves swimming the muck with the rest of us. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Still though, I don't want to minimize anybody's pain, because it's still pain, even if they are slow to catch on. Addiction is no joke. Suicide is no joke. Despair kills, I wouldn't wish it on anyone - that it's in the news is good. Late, but good.

I am (very, very, very) tired of aggrieved white voices that sound like a lot of complaining and whining to my ears. Equality seems to feel like a loss to a lot of white people, particularly men - but I try anyway. If I were in those shoes, I can't say I'd feel any different. I honestly can't be sure, I'd like to believe that I'd see the truth but why would I?

[Kind of Blue]

7. I have to get back to you with a response that

I feel but can't articulate right now. Particularly, your last paragraph opens up something a little wider for me. I like that. Thanks!

[Rebkeh]

17. You're welcome

[Live and Learn]

8. It is an excellent article and although I don't think we should minimize the

pain drug abuse and the injustice system have caused people of any color it obviously has hit minorities the hardest.

[Starry Messenger]

9. K&R

There have been a minor flurry of news stories about whites in crisis--paired with the reports about white middle-aged people dying in higher numbers, that elicit a lot of "human interest" about despair and lack of mobility.

But these same struggles in the Black community aren't given the same human face in the media or by politicians.

[JustAnotherGen]

10. Remember when it came out

That the military was looking to black women to understand how they can lower the suicide rate amongst vets and those currently serving?

I kind of would like to tell everyone to keep a stiff upper lip and get on with living (as we have to do in this nightmare called American) but then I get accused of being insensitive and a meanie.

Instead of say -

Gosh! THAT'S how she does it!

[Starry Messenger]

15. I remember that about the military.

I know, I think that too. "Welcome to the life in America many others were already living. Take a seat."

[Tarheel_Dem]

14. Thank you.

"But these same struggles in the Black community aren't given the same human face in the media or by politicians."

[Starry Messenger]

16. And then when the Jordan Davis and the Trayvon Martins, the Sandra Blands

get killed, all the burden of blame gets shifted to them, and their killers are given these complicated personal life narratives that we are supposed to be feel bad about. I know there isn't any way to legislate this kind of thing out of existence. I wish there were.

[tishaLA]

26. this absolutely fits in with the Christie addiction video

and in his retelling of it recently on Jake Tapper, he continues to emphasize the story of his friend, Ivy educated, successful lawyer, with a doctor wife and two lovely children living in a gorgeous home--then came the Percocet and alcohol. It's very effective because it plays on the idea of sympathy--in Adam Smith's famous phraseology from Theory of Moral Sentiments, "a fellow feeling"--between white people, and especially middle/upper middle class white people.

[randys1]

27. Remember the teapartier who was saved by ACA so he made youtube about

how the repubs dont do anything for him?

A con will always oppose that which is used by someone else until they need it.

Always.

The Christie story is probably a lie, but if it helps reverse the drug war, great.

[tishaLA]

29. It won't help the drug war one iota

Remember: this is a man who still wants to bust people who smoke weed, even those in states where weed is legal.

[randys1]

30. He does?

[tishaLA]

31. yup

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/chris-christie-enforce-marijuana-illegal-2016-120769

“If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it,” Christie warned. “As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws.”

[randys1]

32. Oh, thought you was talking about Obama

[tishaLA]

33. haha. Oh, OK. sorry for the confusion. nt

[Chitown Kev]

11. I've been saying this for the longest time

Last edited Thu Nov 5, 2015, 03:03 PM - Edit history (1)

and now there's that other study that white folks aren't living as long as they are used to...

but I'm supposed to feel sympathy?

[JI7]

19. that article also made note of how the numbers were

Worse for blacks but in a kind of dismissive way. Like that was just normal and always been that way.

[randys1]

28. Yes, you are supposed to care and now that we suffer from what you suffer from, you are now

validated.

But really not even validated.

Guess who will be first in line for rehab now!

[mcar]

18. Heroin is certainly in my mostly white

Rural FL county. Meth too.

The double standard is real. I cannot even imagine the family toll.

[heaven05]

20. typical

of american media response to "drug crisis" when it hits the 'group' that is sympathized with in every area and at every stage of american culture and society. American culture and society has NEVER found it's moral center so this typical response of our media, to the ongoing "drug crisis, is not surprising or "shocking". This is perfectly exemplified, to me, by the continuing racial hate and disparagement of POC by the media and others in EVERY sector that is abundantly seen in a certain sizable population residing in the teeming masses in this society.

Since the RW coup and takeover of our culture in 2000, things have just gotten worse. The bankers, fascists and racists are at the bottom of americas problems and are steering us slowly, subtly, to the demise of the two party system, I feel. It's already a weakened system because of the 2000 coup and the rise of the Teahadists. We whined a bit in 2000 when the coup happened, yet still capitulated our government to the RW when SCOTUS said our election was okay and Jeb and Patricia did nothing wrong.

We rolled over and moved on into the horror our society is today. Barack Obama has been refreshing and has done a lot against UNPRECEDENTED hate based on his skin color. If HRC or BS is not elected to follow him we will see a certain escalation of the RW 'plan' to disenfranchise and kill as many poor and indigent as possible. To them and the RW media the "takers" are responsible for our society's problems, clearing their conscience of any responsibility for the upcoming.......well we will see, won't we?

[Kind of Blue]

21. Thank you all so much for your insights and information!

I was waiting for my sister last night and started reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me." One passage hit me so hard I had to put the book down. Luckily I found the piece online and post below, because it describes so simply and eloquently this painful double-standard.

"This leads us to another equally important ideal, one that Americans implicitly accept but to which they make no conscious claim. Americans believe in the reality of 'race' as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world... In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men."


http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780147520500&view=printexcerpt

[Digital Puppy]

23. +1 Thanks for the link! n/t

[Kind of Blue]

24. You're welcome!

It's a tough read for me.

[Kind of Blue]

36. Just got this yesterday

http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Between-the-World-and-Me-Audiobook/B010N1IC5A?source_code=FB2GB0054WS111513

I think the trial is $14.95 includes signing up for membership but you can cancel any time.

[randys1]

22. Black people are inconvenient to most white people. One way to deal with that was to inundate

non white neighborhoods with drugs, hoping they would all die somehow, or keep them in their corner, so to speak.

After slavery and Jim Crow, there was little else us white people could do to control or isolate Black people, so we used drugs to try and do that.

All the while these drugs were seeping out of the target rich areas, i.e. Black neighborhoods, and into white areas.

Ultimately, inevitably, the white neighborhoods became addicted to the same drugs.

Can we put as many white people in jail as we did Black for the same thing?

No, so Chris Christie comes out and says "criminalizing drug addiction is wrong".

Thank goodness his white friend became an addict, otherwise many of us, Black or white, may not get help.

Actually you can thank that corporatist who is gonna make billions (according to some) when he leaves office because of his support of TPP, Obama.

He made it mandatory that we get drug treatment. So white folks can rest easy, now that this problem is multi colored, help is on the way!

[Kind of Blue]

25. YAY, help is on the way just in the nick of time.

The number of sacrificial black bodies necessary for reforms is too disheartening for words.

Thanks for the synopsis, randys1.

[Rebkeh]

34. Great article

Here's another on the same subject.[link:http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/dear_white_america_your_working_class_is_literally_dying_and_this_is_your_idea_of_an_answer/|

[Kind of Blue]

37. Excellent article, Rebkeh. Should be an OP.

Thanks! The subject matter sounded strangely familiar. Then I remember reading some time this year that European fertility rate has fallen dramatically. Went to find an article and saw there was an earlier article in the NYTimes, 2008, and many, many more since then!

"Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, Europe represented 12.5 percent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European.

There is no shortage of popular explanations to account for the drop in fertility...'Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future,' Pope Benedict proclaimed in 2006. 'Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present.” In Germany, where the births-to-deaths ratio now results in an annual population loss of roughly 100,000, Ursula von der Leyen, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s family minister (and a mother of seven), declared two years ago that if her country didn’t reverse its plummeting birthrate, 'We will have to turn out the light.' Last March, André Rouvoet, the leader of the Christian Union Party in the Netherlands (and a father of five), urged the government to get proactive and spur Dutch women to have more babies. The Canadian conservative Mark Steyn, author of the 2006 best seller 'America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It,' has warned his fellow North Americans, whose birthrates are relatively high, that, regarding their European allies, 'These countries are going out of business,' and that while at the end of the 21st century there may 'still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands,' these will 'merely be designations for real estate.'

The spiritual concerns aside, though, the main threats to Europe are economic. Alongside birthrate, the other operative factor in the economic equation is lifespan. People everywhere are living longer than ever, and lifespan is continuing to increase beyond what was once considered a natural limit. Policy makers fear that, taken together, these trends forecast a perfect demographic storm. According to a paper by Jonathan Grant and Stijn Hoorens of the Rand Europe research group: 'Demographers and economists foresee that 30 million Europeans of working age will ‘disappear’ by 2050. At the same time, retirement will be lasting decades as the number of people in their 80s and 90s increases dramatically.' The crisis, they argue, will come from a 'triple whammy of increasing demand on the welfare state and health-care systems, with a decline in tax contributions from an ever-smaller work force.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Starry Messenger]

38. That would be a terrific op!

I'll hope you'll post it, it deserves recs.

[ismnotwasm]

35. K&R

[Number23]

39. It's been widely noted that white MURDERERS get more sympathy than black murder VICTIMS

This is nothing new for a racist, white supremacist society.

[randys1]

40. Sympathy hell, you are lucky if a murdered Black person makes the news or media AT ALL

As opposed to pretty white Women dying at the hands of their husbands, nightly news for months.

[Kind of Blue]

41. Yes! And it's fantastic to be able

to point out every single double standard on a wide scale since so many just don't see supremacy and need constant explanations. No more hiding or pretending.