SiriusXM Urban View host Karen Hunter argued that the strongest legal and moral case for reparations centers on the war on drugs, which she described as “literally a war on Black people.”
“Yesterday I said something that was profound to me,” Hunter told listeners. “There’s a conversation to be had around reparations that we aren’t having.” While slavery must be part of any discussion, she said, focusing only there can narrow the case. “A better case right now actually brings more people together,” she said, pointing to drug policy.
Hunter traced the roots of the war on drugs to the aftermath of Reconstruction, arguing that Black communities thrived after emancipation because they had “all of the tools” that built the country.
“So how do we kneecap these people?” she asked. “How do we make it impossible for them to continue to thrive?”
She cited decades of propaganda and violence used to justify repression.
“We have to propagandize. We have to demonize these people,” Hunter declared, recounting how media portrayals fueled terror and lynching. “You have to tell the lie over and over again in order to do the dirt that you want to do.”
At the center of her case was a widely cited quote from former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, published in Harper’s Magazine. Hunter read it aloud air.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies,” Ehrlichman said. “The antiwar left and Black people.” Because the administration could not outlaw either, he continued, officials associated “hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin” and then criminalized both. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
According to Hunter, the consequences were deliberate and enduring.
“We could disrupt those communities,” she quoted. “We could arrest their leaders.” The crack epidemic and sentencing disparities, she argued, stripped families apart and then blamed the victims. “If there’s a case to be made for reparations,” Hunter said, “this should be part of it.”
The Black History Month, Karen Hunter’s premium apparel line, The Global Majority, is highlighting one of her most popular drops, Freedom Isn’t Free.
