Tim Wise writes about 420 festivals across the U.S. and their predominantly White attendants. He also discusses what the drug culture means for different ethnic groups in the U.S.
Excerpt:
Though I tend to agree with those who claim pot has very little negative
health effect upon its users, it does appear to have rather serious consequences
for cognitive function, which would normally be, ya know, a problem at a
college. Indeed, at the big Boulder smoke-out in 2008, white
users demonstrated a drug-induced vapidity that would be viewed as culturally
pathological were it exhibited by students of color. So, for instance, despite
CU Boulder being a highly selective university, they managed to admit the likes
of Emily Benson, who told a reporter she actually came to the school "for the
weed atmosphere," and to be part of the pot legalization movement. Not for an
education, mind you, but to get high. And for this, she took a spot that could
have been given to a hard-working black or brown kid instead, or a working class
white kid for that matter with more serious daily concerns than the munchies.
Call it, stoner affirmative action: a form of preferential treatment extended to
many of the whites at Boulder apparently, including one young woman who
expressed her disappointment upon learning that the cookies and muffins being
handed out by one of her classmates at the 4/20 fest weren't "magical," as in,
filled with even more of the drugs she had already ingested. Bummer: now she'll
have to make do with that one blunt and some Adderall. How will she survive such
an indignity as this?
Meanwhile, as the aforementioned Ms. Benson (from the Kansas City area, and
whose parents must be so proud of her) indulges her habit, and as
thousands of her white classmates do too--many of them styling each other's hair in
dreadlocks, because nothing goes better with white privilege than cultural
appropriation--it is students of color who continue to be
told they are the unqualified ones, that they are the ones
who are unjustly taking up space at elite schools,
that their acceptance into such places is "lowering standards" and
cheapening the value of a college degree.
The irony of it all couldn't be more perfect: a bunch of white college
students clamoring for the legalization of pot, not realizing that
for them it already is, in effect, legal. If they really wanted to see
the laws change, they would be out demanding an end to the racist and classist
war on drugs.
They would be engaged in advocacy, not bong hits, the latter of which make
the former exceedingly difficult. In fact, the only way the nation's drug laws
are likely to change--for everyone--would be if the jails and prisons came to be
flooded with bodies that looked a lot like the ones in the meadow at UC Santa
Cruz and on the quad at CU Boulder. Only if whites start getting locked up will
sufficient pressure be brought to bear to liberalize drug laws. As long as the
ones being locked up are black and brown, the very same whites whose kids are
blazing up (with taxpayer support, via student loans no less), will say nothing.
Perhaps if their little bundles of THC started getting sent to the joint (as in,
the penitentiary, not the other kind), things would change. But don't expect any
of the weed warriors at the 420 events to volunteer for that kind of thing.
Their commitment isn't to social change, after all. It's to getting high, to
self-indulgence, to their own narcissism.
This is perhaps the most blatant example of white privilege imaginable:
the ability to do what you want, when you want, without fear of consequence, and
then to have that behavior deemed largely harmless, even when, for others, it
would be viewed as dysfunctional, destructive, and evidence of a profound
cultural flaw.
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