Deep Cover (feat. Adam Serwer)

Unclear and Present Danger

Jamelle Bouie

Tv & Film, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2022

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jamelle, John and special guest Adam Serwer of The Atlantic watch one of the great crime movies of the 1990s — Bill Duke’s “Deep Cover” — and talk about post-Cold War anxiety over the drug trade, Black “tough on crime” politics, and the war on drugs.

Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.

John Ganz

Jamelle Bouie

Links from the episode!

New York Times front-page for April 15, 1992

James Forman’s book on the Black politics of the early 1990s, “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”

“THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Candidates' Records; Four Years of Bush’s Drug War: New Funds but an Old Strategy”

Transcript

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0:00.0	The great thing about life on the street is you know how it's going to be.
0:09.0	It's always the same.
0:11.0	It's always getting worse.
0:14.0	Osama vista!
0:16.0	On these streets, one color rules, green.
0:20.0	It's not 10 kilos we want, we want 20.
0:22.6	Listen, you're taking a lot away for a guy we hardly know, John.
0:24.6	Where are you moving this stuff?
0:25.6	He's gonna get you busted.
0:26.6	No, I won't.
0:27.6	On these streets, nothing's what it seems to be.
0:30.6	Is that I'm busted?
0:31.6	Yeah.
0:32.6	Or who is he?
0:33.6	Listen, John here got busted, but he kept his mouth shut.
0:41.3	On these streets, he'd be the perfect criminal if he wasn't the perfect cop.
0:47.3	There's no such thing as an American anymore.
0:49.3	No blacks, no whites, no nothing.
0:50.3	It's just rich people and poor people.
0:53.3	Larry Fishburn.
0:55.6	Don't blow your cover.
1:00.2	Deep cover.
	...

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