{"id":68698,"date":"2016-04-06T09:25:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T14:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68698"},"modified":"2016-04-05T23:27:02","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T04:27:02","slug":"the-suspicious-convergence-of-addiction-treatment-and-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/04\/06\/the-suspicious-convergence-of-addiction-treatment-and-whiteness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Suspicious Convergence of Addiction Treatment and Whiteness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week PBS hosted a powerful essay<\/a> by law professor\u00a0Ekow Yankah. He points to how the new opioid addiction crisis is being talked about very differently than addiction crises of the past. Today, he points out, addiction is being\u00a0described and increasingly treated as\u00a0a\u00a0health<\/a> crisis<\/a> with<\/a> a<\/a> human<\/a> toll<\/a>.\u00a0“Our nation has linked arms,” he says, “to save souls.”<\/p>\n

Even just a decade ago, though, addicts weren’t victims, they were criminals.<\/p>\n

What’s changed? Well, race. “Back then, when addiction was a black problem,” Yankah says about 30 years ago, “there was no wave of national compassion.” Instead, we were introduced to suffering “crack babies” and their inhuman, incorrigible mothers. We were told that crack and crime went hand-in-hand because the people involved were simply\u00a0bad. We were told to fear addicts, not care for them. It was a “war on drugs” that was fought against the people who had succumbed to them.<\/p>\n

Yankah is clear that this a welcome change. But, he says, for African Americans, who would have welcomed such compassion for the drugs that devastated their<\/em> neighborhoods and families, it is bittersweet.<\/p>\n