From the New Republic:
Legalized Pot Was Supposed to Help Build Black Wealth in Los Angeles. It Failed.
Social equity programs were supposed to correct the disparities of the war on drugs as marijuana became legal. What went wrong?
By Amanda Chicago Lewis, New Republic, April 4, 2022
If it had been white politicians promising that legal weed was going to make Black people rich, Kika Keith thinks she never would have believed them.
But throughout 2017, it was Black politicians, Black activists, and Black executives telling standing-room–only crowds in the historically Black neighborhoods of Los Angeles to start a marijuana business and create “generational wealth.” Keith attended dozens of cannabis events that year, trying to immerse herself in the city’s pot industry and learn everything she could.
On a sticky summer afternoon in September, she made her way to a Watts community center to hear from one of the most powerful people in Southern California: Herb Wesson, L.A.’s first Black City Council president. Wesson took the stage in a powder-blue suit and smiled. Looking out at rows of Black faces glistening in the heat, he opened by acknowledging a shared history of hardship: “Most of us grew up in houses that didn’t have air conditioning, so we can handle this,” he said. “We can handle this.” The room swelled with laughter and applause.
California was legalizing marijuana for anyone over 21, and Wesson declared that the Black and brown communities that had been disproportionately targeted for arrest when weed was illegal would now be given priority in running licensed cannabis businesses. “It’s very, very important that you participate,” he said, urging those present to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. [More]
Kika Keith, pictured below, did not make a success of it. The reason blacks dominated illegal marijuana sales was because it was illegal.
SHOCKING https://t.co/AUUXBF0RVK
— Not Interested In Your Opinion (you prolly stupid) (@realisticrealst) April 10, 2022
The reasons are complicated, but remember that the plan for Weedparations as Reparations was floated here mostly as a joke by Steve Sailer, in As Reparations, Why Not Give Blacks the Marijuana Monopoly?, April 5, 2018.
Heck, why not give African-Americans a monopoly on legal marijuana retailing, the way American Indians get casinos?
What’s the worst that could happen? Black retailers would be inefficient, open only for short hours, and charge high prices?
Sure, Korean go-getters straight off the plane from Pusan would no doubt do a more pervasive job of helping Americans fulfill our ambition of getting high while we watch daytime television, just as they do a more efficient job of selling black hair care products to blacks in the ghetto than blacks do. But marijuana selling is a bad thing, so the more incompetent the better.
See also:
That last one is in reference to something Bernie Sanders said in a debate:
Look at Biden's face #astonishment
— Matti Lahti (@poika28) February 26, 2020
