The Reagan era enforced discriminatory drug laws despite endorsing Japanese-American redress

Evidence

In spite of such stories, black Americans are more likely to be convicted when they use crack cocaine and to receive longer sentences than white Americans. It turns out, the same President Reagan who apologized and approved redress payments for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II saw no contradiction in enforcing discriminatory laws that imprisoned drug users for longer sentences when they were using or dealing while black. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 418

Categorization

• XREF: Reagan’s Japanese-American redress recognized a racially-targeted policy; his war on drugs repeated the pattern without redress — a useful contrast for the harm-and-remedy architecture.