Blacks today continue to express overwhelming support for the presence of more police in their neighborhoods

See Clarence Thomas vs. the Fictional Progressive Narrative: His writings from the bench frequently bust popular left-wing myths about race and justice by Jason L. Riley. Excerpt:

"The stiffer sentencing guidelines for crack-cocaine offenses, versus those for powder cocaine, date to the mid-1980s. The thinking in Washington at the time was that because crack was cheaper than powder, more addictive and more closely associated with violent crime, offenders should face tougher penalties. Like everything else these days, such attitudes are viewed almost exclusively through a racial lens, but as Justice Thomas points out, the sentiment at the time transcended both race and party affiliation.

“In response to these concerns, Congress quickly passed a bill with near unanimity,” Justice Thomas writes. “The new law created mandatory-minimum penalties for various drug offenses, and it set much lower trigger thresholds for crack offenses.” The 1986 bill passed the Democrat-controlled House 392-16 and the Republican Senate 97-2. “A majority of the Congressional Black Caucus cosponsored and voted for the bill,” he adds in a footnote. Many black leaders at the time were motivated by two major worries. “First, crack was fueling crime against residents of inner cities, who were predominantly black.” Second, “there were concerns that prosecutors were not taking these kinds of crimes seriously enough because the victims were disproportionately black.”

Various efforts would be made in ensuing decades to determine if Congress had overreached and how to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder offenses. But what drove the initial effort was bipartisan, cross-racial concern for what was going on in poor black communities. And although today’s woke left is at pains to deny it, that effort was led by black lawmakers responding to their constituents, as Justice Thomas’s opinion reminds us.

Current efforts to reduce resources for law enforcement in the name of “social justice” for blacks ignore that blacks have long complained about underpolicing of their communities. In a 1993 Gallup poll, 75% of black respondents said they wanted more cops on the streets, and 82% said that the court system goes too easy on offenders. Blacks today continue to express overwhelming support for the presence of more police in their neighborhoods, which suggests that, unlike the progressive politicians and activists who claim to speak on their behalf, most blacks are more interested in safe communities than they are in the racial composition of the inmate population."