For my Digital Exhibit, I want to showcase imagery from the period of Nixon’s War on Drugs, portraying it from a different perspective that isn’t normally recognized. Often times, we understand the economic and social implications of the Drug War in the 1970s. However, its impact on race and enforcing racial discrimination during that time period is what is significant to me. Involving themes including mass incarceration and criminalizing minority groups like African Americans, hippies, and others, I want to expose a new view towards the U.S. Government’s War on Drugs and its true intentions in cleansing society.

In the view of Black American citizens, the War on Drugs could’ve been considered as bad as the Jim Crow Laws. Because of its tough drug policies and double standards leading to unfair regulation or application of laws for different groups of people, it leads to the marginalization of minority groups in American communities. According to reports from the US Sentencing Commission, although African Americans only used drugs 1.5% more than White Americans, almost 600 more African Americans were arrested per every 100,000 residents of each race.

I want to focus on the problems created due to the War on Drugs, and how instead of fixing the issue at hand through rehabilitation or better methods, our government officials turned to a more detrimental decision, mass incarceration, leading to a great influx of people (especially African Americans) in the prison system. Evidence shows its reinforcement of stereotypes, its increase of violence and the black market, and the overall negative effects seen and experienced by many minority groups. Through choosing specific images and propaganda, I want to portray the true hidden intention of the War on Drugs under Nixon and how it negatively affected thousands of people in our country.